Erwin Baur

Erwin Baur (1875 to 1933) was a German physician-trained botanist and one of the founders of plant genetics and plant breeding research in Germany. Born at Ichenheim in Baden, he studied medicine and botany at Heidelberg, Freiburg and Kiel and took doctorates in both fields. He then made long voyages as a ship's doctor to South America, where he came to study the plant world and began his work on botanical and agricultural heredity. He qualified as a university teacher of botany in Berlin in 1904 and became a full professor at the Agricultural College in Berlin in 1911. After an exchange professorship at Madison in the United States in 1914, he founded the first institute for heredity in Friedrichshagen, followed by a larger institute at Dahlem in 1922 and, in 1929, a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for plant breeding and heredity research that quickly gained an international reputation. His breeding work rested on extensive crossing experiments with races and species of the snapdragon, together with an analysis of its hereditary factors, and led to practical results such as a lupine free of bitter substances and cultivated plants bred for immunity. He edited several journals on heredity and breeding.