Christian Friedrich Hornschuch

Christian Friedrich Hornschuch was born on August 21, 1793, in Bad Rodach, Bavaria, Germany. Following the footsteps of his father, who was a pharmacist, he began studying Pharmacy at age 15 and later turned his focus to Botany and Chemistry.

In 1819, he traveled to Berlin, where he met Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck, one of his main collaborators. At the herbarium of the Berlin Botanical Museum, he organized the mosses left by Carl Ludwig Willdenow, one of the institution's most important collections.

In 1820, he was appointed associate professor of natural history and director of the botanical gardens at the University of Greifswald. In 1827, he became a tenured professor and, in 1836, assumed the role of university president.

Hornschuch specialized in the field of bryology and, together with the naturalist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776-1858) and the engraver Jacob Sturm (1771-1848), co-authored Bryologia Germanica (1823–31), an important volume on the mosses of Germany and Switzerland.

With the support of his mentor Hoppe, Hornschuch was one of the founders of Flora, the scientific journal of the Botanical Society of Regensburg. Among the most illustrious members of this society were Johann von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, and Carl Friedrich von Martius.

In 1834, the great botanist von Martius named a species of moss in honor of Hornschuch. The samples of the Brachymenium hornschuchianum Mart. were collected by Martius on his journey across Brazil.