Johannes Paulus Lotsy


Johannes Paulus Lotsy was a Dutch botanist, specializing in evolution and heredity. Lotsy was born in Dordrecht and died in Voorburg.

Career

After getting his PhD from Göttingen University he had a teaching positions at Johns Hopkins University where he was director of the herbarium. From 1896 to 1900 he worked in Java. Then he taught at Leiden University, as a lecturer in Systematic Botany. He became director of the State Herbarium 1906–1909, then Secretary of the Hollandsche Maatschappij van Wetenschappen.
He founded the Association internationale des Botanistes and was editor of the Botanisches Centralblatt. He proposed a system of plant classification, based on phylogenetics. Lotsy argued for a major role of hybridization in evolution.

Expeditions

India, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and Egypt. He also studied the flora of Italy and Switzerland.

Publications

Lotsy argued that the monocotyledons were diphyletic, with the Spadiciflorae being derived from the dicotyledons and the remainder from a hypothetical ancestor, the Proranales. Hutchinson, who argued for a monophyletic origin, considered this improbable.

Synopsis

Vorträge über botanische Stammesgeschichte