Gustav Lindau

Biography

Gustav Lindau was born on 2 May 1866 in Dessau (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany). He studied natural history in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he studied under Simon Schwendener (1829–1919). He completed his doctoral thesis on the apothecia of lichens in 1888. In 1890, he became director at the botanical garden in Münster and an assistant to Julius Oscar Brefeld (1839–1925).

In 1892, he became an assistant at the Berlin botanical garden. He obtained his habilitation in 1894, and became a professor in 1902. He has been credited for having introduced the term "plechtenchyma" to refer to fungal tissue in an 1899 publication, which he proposed could be further adapted for specific tissue types by adding prefixes such as "para-" and "proso-".

Lindau died in Berlin on 10 October 1923. His entire collection of herbarium specimens and documents, stored in Berlin, was lost during the 1943 bombing raids.