He was born on 14 January 1914 in
Berlin and raised in
Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland). He fled Germany in the 1930s due to increasing difficulties and went first to Ireland then to
South Africa. In the
Second World War he fought for the Allies with the South African forces serving in North Africa, Italy and Greece. In Greece he was taken
prisoner of war by the communist partisans. After the war he studied Botany at the
University of Natal graduating BSc then MSc then gaining a doctorate (PhD). He became a lecturer in 1951. In 1960, in the aftermath of the
Sharpeville massacre he was imprisoned as a communist sympathiser. He was detained for three months without charge. He retired in 1982 and moved to
Northampton and died there on 11 September 2001. ==Publications==