Carl Moritz Gottsche

Carl Moritz Gottsche was a German physician and bryologist, born in Altona on 3 July 1808 and died on 28 September 1892. He is described as a physician, yet he is remembered chiefly as a leading authority on the Hepaticae, the liverworts. With Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck and Johann Bernhard Wilhelm Lindenberg he wrote the Synopsis Hepaticarum, issued between 1844 and 1847, which became a landmark work of hepaticology. Together with Gottlob Ludwig Rabenhorst he also issued numbers 221 to 600 of the exsiccata series Hepaticae Europaeae, and in 1881 the University of Kiel gave him an honorary doctorate in philosophy. Two liverwort genera, Gottschea and Gottschelia, are named after him. His son Carl Christian Gottsche became a geologist.