אגוסט קניץ

Agost Kanitz (1843-1896), botanist, born in Lugoj, Romania (then Lugos, part of the Austrian Empire) and died in Cluj, Romania (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied in Vienna, Paris, and in Leyden, Holland.

In 1872 he was made professor of botany at the University of Kolozsvar (then in Hungary, later Cluj, Romania), where he established a botanical institute and herbarium. Kanitz was the first scientist in southeastern Europe to work for the classification of flora throughout the region. Together with others he classified the flora of Slavonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Albania. He also edited a list of the flora of Romania.

He classified and wrote about the flora collected by Hungarian expeditions to Asia Minor and China. He contributed to Flora Brasiliensis, edited by Carl F. Martius. He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Arts and of numerous international scientific institutions, among them the international botanical jury of Florence, Italy. He founded, sponsored and edited from 1877 to 1892 the first botanical journal of Hungary, Magyar Novenytani Lapok. He wrote a number of books on the subject.