Pringsheim was born at Wziesko (now
Dobrodzien),
Landsberg,
Prussian Silesia, where his father was an industrialist from a wealthy Jewish heritage. His grandfather owned iron works. He was one of nine siblings. After private tuitions he went to the gymnasium in Oppeln. He was later sent to Breslau to the Friedrichsgymnasium where he received a school leaving certificate after two attempts in 1843. and studied at the universities of
Breslau,
Leipzig, and
Berlin successively. While at Leipzig in 1844,
Otto Kuntze advised him to buy a microscope and to study the work of
Mathias Jakob Schlieden on botany. He graduated in 1848 as doctor of philosophy with the thesis
De forma et incremento stratorum crassiorum in plantarum cellula. He suggested that the plant cell wall growth occurred from the apposition from inside the cell not by adhesion from outside. He spent some time in London and Paris and joined the University of Berlin in 1851 as a privatdozent. His habilitation thesis was on the development of the oomycete of
Saprolegnia ferax. In 1864 he succeeded Schlieden as professor of botany at the
University of Jena. He taught cryptogamic botany and microscopic technique and his students included
Eduard Strasburger. In 1868, Pringsheim's father died and he left an inheritance that allowed him to resign (partly due to poor health, thought to be asthma) and work in a private laboratory at home in Berlin. He encouraged several other researchers
Wilhelm Pfeffer,
Johannes Reinke, and
Alexander Tschirch to conduct research in his private laboratory. From 1874 he was interested in plant physiology, examining carbon assimilation. He also suggested that
chlorophyll-pigment acted as a screen, with the main function of protecting the
protoplasm from light-rays which would neutralize its assimilative activity by stimulating too active respiration. This view has not been accepted as offering an adequate explanation of the phenomena. Pringsheim founded in 1858, and edited until his death, the journal
Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Botanik, which still bears his name. He was also founder, in 1882, and first president, of the German Botanical Society. He was involved in the establishment of the German marine biology institute on Heligoland. Pringsheim was aware of the algal diversity of the region and wanted botany to be an area of research there. His daughters donated 25000 reichmarks to establish a sea museum in Heligoland. The Nathanael Pringsheim Foundation was established in 1992. Then in 1920
Franz Xaver Rudolf von Höhnel published in Ann. Mykol. vol.18
Pringsheimiella, which is a
genus of
green algae, in the family
Ulvellaceae. In 1939,
John Nathaniel Couch published
Pringsheimiella (a genus of fungi). The standard
botanical author abbreviation Pringsh. is applied to
species he described. ==Notes==