Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten

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Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten (6 November 1817 – 1908) was a German botanist and geologist born in Stralsund. From 1844 to 1856 he traveled the northern part of South America, following the example of Humboldt. He was a professor at the agricultural college in Berlin from 1856 to 1868, and then a professor of plant physiology at the University of Vienna (1868–72). In 1881, encouraged by David Friedrich Weinland, he supported Otto Hahn's idea that meteorites could contain organic life and wrote Die Meteorite und ihre Organismen. He died in 1908. As a taxonomist, he named many botanical species.