Franz Xaver von Wulfen
Encyclopedia
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
Franz Xaver von Wulfen (born 5 November 1728 in Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
; died 16 March 1805 in Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
) was a botanist, mineralogist, alpinist, and Jesuit priest. He is credited with discovering Wulfenia carinthiaca
Wulfenia carinthiaca
Wulfenia carinthiaca, commonly named Wulfenia, is a plant of the plantain family. The Wulfenia is endemic to the Gartnerkofel mountain of the Carnic Alps at the Austro-Italian border....
and the lead molybdate mineral wulfenite
Wulfenite
Wulfenite is a lead molybdate mineral with the formula PbMoO4. It can be most often found as thin tabular crystals with a bright orange-red to yellow-orange color, sometimes brown, although the color can be highly variable. In its yellow form it is sometimes called "yellow lead ore".It crystallizes...
.
His father, Christian Friedrich von Wulfen, was a high-ranking lieutenant in the Austrian Army. Franz's education took place at Kaschau Gymnasium in present-day Košice
Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
. When he was 17, he joined a Jesuit school in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and following his graduation he became a school instructor (chiefly of mathematics and physics) in Vienna, Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Neusohl, Gorz, Laibach (Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
), and (from 1764) Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
. After the Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the 1760s he remained in Klagenfurt until his death. By 1763 he was officially a priest.
From his twenty-second year he devoted himself to botany. The upland and valley flora of the Eastern Alps was his chief study. To find specimens, Wulfen frequently hiked up the Großglockner
Großglockner
The Grossglockner is, at 3,798 m above sea level, Austria's highest mountain and the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass...
and was a pioneer in exploring the Austrian Alps. In 1781, he published his studies in the well-illustrated Plantae rariorum Carinthicae (Rare Plants of Carinthia
Duchy of Carinthia
The Duchy of Carinthia was a duchy located in southern Austria and parts of northern Slovenia. It was separated from the Duchy of Bavaria in 976, then the first newly created Imperial State beside the original German stem duchies....
). He made numerous trips to the south (on many occasions to the Adriatic Sea) and to the north as far as Holland.
In 1796, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
.
A monument in Klagenfurt, erected in 1838, honors him, describing him as "equally great as priest, scholar and man". The genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
Wulfenia was named in his honor by Nicholas Jacquin.
Works
- Plantae rariores carinthiacae. V: Miscellanea austriaca ad botanicam, chemiam et historiam naturalem spectantia, vol. I (1778) str. 147-163 in vol. II (1781) str. 25-183
- Abhandlung vom Kärntner Bleispate, 1785
- Plantae rariores carinthiacae. V: Collectanea ad botanicam, chemiam et historiam naturalem, vol. I (1786) str. 186-364, vol. II (1788) str. 112-234, vol. III (1789) str. 3-166, vol. IV (1790) str. 227-348
- Descriptiones Quorumdam Capensium Insectorum, 1786
- Plantae rariores descriptae, 1803
- Cryptogama aquatica, 1803
- Flora Norica phanerogama, 1858 (published posthumously like much of his work)