Thorvald Julius Sørensen | |
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| Born | 4 July 1902 Sækbæk, Denmark |
| Died | 21 June 1973 (aged 70) |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | University of Copenhagen |
| Known for | Flora of the Arctic, Sørensen similarity index |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Botany |
| Institutions | University of Copenhagen |
Thorvald (Thorwald) Julius Sørensen (4 July 1902 – 21 June 1973) was a Danish botanist and evolutionary biologist. [1]
Sørensen was professor at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University 1953–1955 and at the University of Copenhagen 1955–1972. He was director of the Copenhagen Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum during the same period. [1]
Thorvald Sørensen spent the years 1931–1935, based on Ella Island, studying plants in the then little known North-East Greenland. He published the botanical research of the Three-year Expedition to East Greenland. [2] He also published a doctoral thesis on the annual phenological rhythm of the High Arctic plant species, including the pollination of their flowers (1941).
He critically revised the Greenland flora and sorted out taxonomy of a number of difficult taxa, most notably Puccinellia .
He carried out a number of studies in the evolutionary biology of plants, such as Taraxacum , Capsella bursa-pastoris and Ranunculus .
He developed a quotient of similarity in species composition between plant communities—the still much-used Sørensen similarity index. He illustrated its use on a data set collected in Danish grassland by Johannes Grøntved (1882-1956), who used the quantitative method to sample vegetation developed by Christen C. Raunkiær (1860–1938). [3] [4]
The Arctic campion species Silene sorensenis and Th. Sørensen Land in Greenland were named in his honour.
Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming, known as Eugen Warming, was a Danish botanist and a main founding figure of the scientific discipline of ecology. Warming wrote the first textbook (1895) on plant ecology, taught the first university course in ecology and gave the concept its meaning and content. Scholar R. J. Goodland wrote in 1975: “If one individual can be singled out to be honoured as the founder of ecology, Warming should gain precedence”.
Christen Christensen Raunkiær was a Danish botanist, who was a pioneer of plant ecology. He is mainly remembered for his scheme of plant strategies to survive an unfavourable season and his demonstration that the relative abundance of strategies in floras largely corresponded to the Earth's climatic zones. This scheme, the Raunkiær system, is still widely used today and may be seen as a precursor of modern plant strategy schemes, e.g. J. Philip Grime's CSR system.
Anders Sandøe Ørsted, also written as Anders Sandoe Oersted or Anders Sandö Örsted was a Danish botanist, mycologist, zoologist and marine biologist. He was the nephew of physicist Hans Christian Ørsted and of politician Anders Sandøe Ørsted.
The history of phycology is the history of the scientific study of algae. Human interest in plants as food goes back into the origins of the species, and knowledge of algae can be traced back more than two thousand years. However, only in the last three hundred years has that knowledge evolved into a rapidly developing science.
Johannes Iversen was a Danish palaeoecologist and plant ecologist.
Tyge Wittrock Böcher was a Danish botanist, evolutionary biologist, plant ecologist and phytogeographer.
Carl Emil Hansen Ostenfeld was a Danish systematic botanist. He graduated from the University of Copenhagen under professor Eugenius Warming. He was a keeper at the Botanical Museum 1900–1918, when he became professor of botany at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University. In 1923, by the early retirement of Raunkiær's, Ostenfeld became professor of botany at the University of Copenhagen and director of the Copenhagen Botanical Garden, both positions held until his death in 1931. He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and served on the board of directors of the Carlsberg Foundation.
Ove Vilhelm Paulsen was a Danish botanist.
Olaf Hagerup was a Danish botanist. He studied botany at the University of Copenhagen from 1911 under the professors Eugenius Warming, Christen C. Raunkiær, L. Kolderup Rosenvinge og W. Johannsen. He took his Ph.D. from the same university in 1930. From 1934 to 1960, he was superintendent at the Botanical Museum of the University of Copenhagen.
Knud Jessen was a Danish botanist and quaternary geologist.
Plant life-form schemes constitute a way of classifying plants alternatively to the ordinary species-genus-family scientific classification. In colloquial speech, plants may be classified as trees, shrubs, herbs, etc. The scientific use of life-form schemes emphasizes plant function in the ecosystem and that the same function or "adaptedness" to the environment may be achieved in a number of ways, i.e. plant species that are closely related phylogenetically may have widely different life-form, for example Adoxa moschatellina and Sambucus nigra are from the same family, but the former is a small herbaceous plant and the latter is a shrub or tree. Conversely, unrelated species may share a life-form through convergent evolution.
Johannes Grøntved was a Danish botanist. He made investigations of flora and vegetation in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Estonia. He was editor of The Botany of Iceland from vol. 3 part 2.
Henning Eiler (Ejler) Petersen was a Danish mycologist, botanist and marine biologist. He made a major contribution to unveiling the mysterious die-back of eel grass in Northern European waters in the early 20th century as a pathogen outbreak.
Julius Grøntved was a Danish botanist and phycologist. He worked at the Danish Institute for Fisheries and Marine Research.
Gunnar Nygaard was a Danish phycologist, and a leading authority on the ecology and taxonomy of Danish phytoplankton. Nygaard completed his master's at University of Copenhagen, initially working at the Freshwater Biological Laboratory in Hillerød as a research stipendiary. From 1933 until his retirement in 1972 he was employed as a lecturer in the Danish grammar school system. Thereafter, he was provided an office at the Freshwater Biological Laboratory to facilitate his work. In recognition of his scientific contributions, the University of Copenhagen awarded him the degree dr. scient. honoris causa.
Jens Wilhelm August Lind was a Danish apothecary, botanist and mycologist. He was a pupil of Emil Rostrup and published a full account of all fungi collected in Denmark by Rostrup. These were mainly microfungi, such as plant pathogens. He also wrote accounts on microfungi from Greenland and elsewhere, mainly based on collections made by other persons on expeditions, e.g. Gjøa expedition and the Second Thule Expedition. Combining his pharmaceutical and mycological knowledge, he was early in experimenting on chemical control of plant pathogens and recommending it to other practitioners. He also - together with Knud Jessen - wrote an account on the immigration history of weeds to Denmark.
Paul Emil Elliot Gelting was a Danish ecologist, botanist and lichenologist. He was associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and particularly active in Greenland.
Jenny Hempel was a Danish plant physiology pioneer. In 1916, she was the first Danish woman to receive a doctoral degree in a botanical discipline – and until 1956, she was the only. She discovered the diurnal fluctuations in cell sap acidity in succulent plants, which are now known to be linked with the CAM photosynthetic pathway.
C. H. Ostenfeld Glacier, is one of the major glaciers in northern Greenland.
Mogens Engell Köie or Køie was a Danish ecologist and botanist. He was the first professor of botanical ecology at the University of Copenhagen. The standard author abbreviation Köie is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
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