Wilhelm Gustav Franz Herter


Wilhelm Gustav Franz Herter was a German botanist and mycologist.
In 1908 he received his doctorate in Berlin with a dissertation on the genus Lycopodium. From 1923 to 1939 he lived and worked in Uruguay, gaining Uruguayan citizenship in 1925. In Montevideo, he was associated with its botanical garden and museum, and in the meantime taught classes at the university. In 1934 he became director of the Revista Sudamericana de Botánica.
During the Second World War, Herter was the director of the nazi-german publishing series 'Veröffentlichungen der Staatlichen Botanischen Anstalten des Generalgouvernements".
Known for his work in the fields of systematics and taxonomy, he is credited with identifying more than 200 species new to science. He was a leading expert on the botanical order Lycopodiales. Taxa with the specific epithet of herteri are named in his honor, an example being the mycological species Tulostoma herteri.

Selected works