The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Nägeli, Karl Wilhelm

NÄGELI, nā'gĕ-lē, Karl Wilhelm, Swiss botanist: b. Kilchberg, near Zürich, 27 March l8l7; d. Munich, 10 May 1891. He studied in Zürich, Geneva and Berlin; began (1842) the teaching of botany in Zürich; became extraordinary professor at the university there in 1848, full professor in 1852 at Freiburg, and at Zürich three years later. Afterward he held the professorship of botany at Munich. His most important work for science was in the physiology and morphology of plants. His writing deal chiefly with morphological and cytological subjects, and the transformation of species is fully treated in his ‘Merchanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre’ (1883). Most of his publications appeared first in scientific journals, those contributed to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences being published as three volumes of ‘Botanische Mitteilungen’ (1861-81).