Richard Kräusel

Life & Legacy

Richard Oswald Karl Kräusel (29 August 1890 in Breslau – 25 November 1966 in Frankfurt am Main) was a German paleobotanist.
He studied botany at the University of Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand Albin Pax, and in 1913 received his doctorate with the thesis Beiträge zur kenntnis der Holzer aus der schlesischen Braunkohle ("On wood from Silesian lignite"). From 1920 to 1952 he worked as a lecturer and professor at the University of Frankfurt. He was also associated with the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, where he served as head of the department of paleobotany. During World War II his collections of fossil plants were stored in a nearby castle for safekeeping; unfortunately these collections were destroyed during bombing raids on Frankfurt.
During his career, he traveled worldwide in his investigations of fossil plants — Southeast Asia (1921, 1926), South America (1924, 1947, 1956/57), United States and Canada (1928, 1959), South-West Africa (1928, 1953–54) and India (1960/61, 1964). On his later journeys, he conducted research on flora of Gondwanaland and collected fossil specimens to replace those that were previously destroyed. In Europe, he carried out studies of Mesozoic flora of southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
With Hermann Weyland, he carried out important research on land plants of the Devonian. He is also remembered for his analysis of Tertiary angiosperm leaf cuticles.