Alexander Braun

Alexander Braun (born May 10, 1805, Regensburg, Bavaria—died March 29, 1877, Berlin) was the chief botanist of the “nature philosophy” school, a doctrine attempting to explain natural phenomena in terms of the speculative theories of essences and archetypes that dominated early 19th-century German science.

Despite his lifelong adherence to vitalistic principles, Braun added important qualifications to the cell theory—i.e., the concept of the cell as the basic unit of life. He also did much to elucidate the sex cycles of primitive plants. Collaborating with the German biologist Karl Schimper, he attempted to establish an idealized plant model based on their observation that the arrangement of leaves on the plant stem (phyllotaxy) in many cases describes a spiral pattern according to fixed geometric rules.

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Braun taught botany and zoology at the Karlsruhe polytechnic school (1833–46) and was professor of botany at the University of Freiburg, Breisgau (1846–50), before holding the same position and serving as director of the botanical garden at the University of Berlin (1851–77). He devoted much of his career to the study of cryptogams (non-seed-bearing plants), which led him to his theoretical system of plant structure expounded in Betrachtungen über die Erscheinung der Verjüngung in der Natur . . . (1851; “Observations on the Appearance of Rejuvenation in Nature . . .”). While he argued against the inductive reasoning characteristic of empirical research, his work encouraged the systematic study of plant morphology; his recognition of the basic unity of organisms in form and function by defining the cell in terms of cytoplasm enveloped by a flexible membrane constitutes perhaps his most important contribution.