Hofmeister and his sister Clementine were the children of Friederich and Frederike (née Seidenschnur) Hofmeister. She (died 28 March 1870) and seven children pre-deceased him. Nevertheless, he was only 27 when he published his ground-breaking monograph on the
alternation of generations in plants. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Rostock in 1851. Hofmeister is widely credited with discovery of
alternation of generations as a general principle in plant life. His proposal that alternation between a spore-bearing generation (
sporophyte) and a gamete-bearing generation (
gametophyte) constituted a unifying theory of plant
evolution that was published in 1851. This was crucial in demonstrating that sexual reproduction occurred in plants, which was under extensive debate in the mid-1800s. He showed that products from both the pollen tube and egg were required. After this book was published, Hofmeister became a leading proponent of
Darwinism. Hofmeister was also an early student of the genetics in plants. He is cited for the first studies of plant
embryology. According to
C. D. Darlington, Hofmeister had observed what would later be called
chromosomes in a dividing cell nucleus as early as 1848. He left detailed sketches which are reproduced in Darlington's
The Facts of Life, though he was not the first to observe them. There is good evidence that
Gregor Mendel was aware of Hofmeister's work and this was part of his motivation to study plant hybridisation. He also carried out experiments to measure the forces and tensions involved as plant stems bend.
Charles Darwin referred to Hofmeister's studies extensively in his own book
The Power of Movement in Plants (1880). In 1869, he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Hofmeister's contribution to biology is still far from widely acknowledged. This may partly be attributed to the fact that only one of his works was translated at the time from
German to
English. However, Kaplan & Cooke conclude that "his reputation became eclipsed because he was so far ahead of his contemporaries that no one could understand or appreciate his work". ==Selected works==