Her father was a civil engineer and, in 1908, head of the construction project of the
Wachau Railway in
Willendorf when the famous
Venus of Willendorf was found there on August 7, 1908. As a child, Edith Kann lived first in
Spitz and from 1911 in Vienna. From 1918 to 1926 she attended the
Realgymnasium for civil servants' daughters Vienna VIII, after which she completed the
Lehramt (teacher qualification) for natural history and geography at the
University of Vienna. In 1930 and 1931 she took part in limnological summer courses at the biological research station at
Lunz am See and began her dissertation under Franz Ruttner (1882–1981) on the
ecology of the
littoral algae of the
Lunzer See (Lake Lunz). On March 21, 1931, she received her doctorate "
sub auspiciis Praesidentis" from the University of Vienna. On June 6, 1932, she passed her teaching examination. Because she became unemployed after the probationary year as a result of the global economic crisis, Kann went to Ankara as a private teacher from 1935 to 1936. When she returned to Vienna in 1937/38, she took a bioeconomics course at the university, but the final exam was abruptly cancelled due to the
Anschluss. She was often involved with lectures at
SIL conferences and always at limnological summer courses at Lake Lunz. Two
cataract operations in 1979 and 1980 did not curtail her studies using microscopy. Not until 1987 did her phycological studies end — in that year, she suffered a devastating
stroke on August 4 in Lunz and died on October 7 in Vienna. She was the sole author of 30 publications and co-author of 6 publications. ==Eponyms==