Friedrich Traugott Kützing

Friedrich Traugott Kützing (1807-1893) is attributed to recognizing the name Epithemia as a valid genus of diatoms, changing the name ever so slightly so that it was nomenclaturally valid..  While he was a pharmacist early in his career and became a secondary school teacher for the rest of his working life he was a prolific describer of nature, particularly algae.  He described over 2000 taxa throughout his career.  He fought bitterly with C.G. Ehrenberg about the nature of diatoms: Ehrenberg considered them animals (and created a classification system for them based on the number of “stomachs” present), while Kützing considered them plants.  While diatoms photosynthesize, like plants do, today we consider diatoms part of a lineage of life that includes neither plants nor animals, but groups of organisms with chlorophylls a and c, which together with other accessory pigments, give diatoms and many of their close allies a golden-brown color.