Biography
From 1836 to 1862 he performed extensive botanical research throughout the Middle East and northern Africa, in which he collected over 300,000 botanical specimens. Beginning in 1836, he accompanied geologist Joseph Russegger (1802-1863) on a scientific trip to Cilicia and Syria, afterwards journeying through Nubia and Sennar. Following the dissolution with Russegger's expedition, he remained in Egypt. He later traveled to Kurdufan (1839), Cyprus, Syria, Mesopotamia and Kurdistan (1840-41); and during 1842-43 he undertook an expedition to Persia. Later he performed botanical investigations in Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon (1855); and also in Cyprus, Asia Minor and Kurdistan (1859). In 1862 he performed additional botanical research in Cyprus and Syria.
The plant genus Kotschya from the family Fabaceae is named in his honor. His name is also associated with a species of lizard, "Kotschy’s gecko" (Cyrtopodion kotschyi).
The standard author abbreviation Kotschy is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.Read more about this topic: Theodor Kotschy
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)