Johann Hedwig, also styled as Johannes Hedwig, was a Germanbotanist notable for his studies of mosses. He is sometimes called the "father of bryology". He is known for his particular observations of sexual reproduction in the cryptogams. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Ioannis Hedwig or Ioanne Hedwig.
Early life
Hedwig was born in Brașov, Transylvania, on December 8, 1730. As the son of a shoemaker, he grew up in poverty. It was in his childhood he became fascinated with mosses. He went on to study medicine at the University of Leipzig, and received his medical degree in 1759.
Career
After receiving his degree, Hedwig worked as a physician for the next twenty years. When he was not granted a license to practice in Transylvania with his Leipzig degree, he worked as a general practitioner in Chemnitz. It was during this time when he first pursued botany as a hobby. He would routinely collect samples in the morning before work, then study his accumulation in the evening. He also was gifted a microscope and a small library, courtesy of Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber. Hedwig was very skilled at both microscopy and biological illustration. He was able to identify and illustrate mossantheridia, archegonia and male gametes. He directly observed the germination of spores and formation of the protonema. He was less successful with other sporophytes, being unable to determine the life cycles of ferns or fungi, but he did make useful observations on the algaeChara and Spirogyra and he made it clear that he was not the first to get new plants from sowing the spores of mosses, David Meese having done it before him. In 1781, he moved to Leipzig, where he worked as a doctor at the city hospital. It was here that he published his first major work, the two volume Fundamentum historiae naturalis muscorum frondosorum in 1782. In 1786, he was hired as an associate professor of medicine at the University of Leipzig. In 1789, he became a professor of botany and director of the botanical garden at the school. In April 1788, he was invited to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1790, he became a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1792, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. His chief work, Species muscorum frondosorum, was published posthumously in 1801. It describes nearly all the moss species then known, and is the starting point for nomenclature of all mosses, except for the Sphagnum group.
