Abstract
BORN at Liberea north-east Bohemia, August Josef Corda began a remarkable scientific career as a pharmacis's assistant. He attracted the attention of Prof Kumbholz, who gave him a microscope and arrai fed for his further education. As early as 1826 Corda succeeded in germinating certain moss and fungal spores and made elaborate drawings of these cultivated cryptogams. He came into prominence for his medical work during the 1832 cholera epidemic, and this brought him to the notice of some German naturalists who gave him an opportunity to study cycads at Berlin. At the Breslau congress of doctors and naturalists in 1833, he gave an account of his work on Cycas, pointing to its links with higher cryptogams. Back in Bohemia, he was engaged to study the specialized algal and other flora of Karlsbad hot springs. Always fighting poverty, Corda's work was handicapped by his indifferent health ; his main income was the stipend as curator of the Bohemian National Museum and the money he received from Count Kaspar Sternberg (president of the Museum Society) for his share in such tasks as examining fossils from the West Bohemian coal measures, described in Sternberg's “Flora der Vorwelt’ (1837). Corda's most important work was ”Icones Fung- orum", printed in parts between 1837 and 1854, and thus completed by other botanists. Here, too, the most valuable feature was Corda's splendid illustra tions. His ability to draw rapidly and accurately led to his being sent by some Bohemian patrons of science to Texas and elsewhere to collect specimens for the Museum. His ship, the Victoria, sank on the return voyage during a storm in the West Indies in September 1849, and Corda perished at the early age of forty.
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A. J. Corda (1809–49). Nature 164, 518 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164518d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164518d0