József Dorner


József Dorner, born József Thurner the younger, was born to German parents József Thurner the elder, a merchant, and Zsuzsanna Schmidt. A pharmacist by trade, he also worked as a schoolteacher and is best known today as a botanist.
By 1831, or 1834, he had changed his family name to Dorner at the time of his registration as a nobleman. This spelling is also his botanical author abbreviation Dorner. According to Szmodits, he married in 1845 but they remained childless, with his wife predeceasing him.

Education, careers in pharmacy and teaching

Initially, Dorner went to school in his hometown of Győr, up to lower secondary school. He completed his secondary education in Sopron, and from 1824 to 1827 he undertook further training as an apprentice at the Kochmeister-run Magyar Korona pharmacy in Sopron, before passing his examinations and receiving an assistantship. With this qualification, he worked as a pharmacy attendant in Pest and Bratislava. Dorner then enrolled at the University of Vienna and the Polytechnic Institute to study pharmacy, including subjects in botany and chemistry, which he completed in 1832.
From 1836 to 1840, he ran a pharmacy in Bratislava called the Arany Korona, that had been purchased for him by his father. However, he sold the business soon after, and went to take a position in the health department of the Lieutenancy Council in Buda. In 1848, Baron József Eötvös, the minister of religion and public education, offered him a teaching role, which he accepted. By 1853, he had become a professor of natural history at the Lutheran lyceum in Szarvas, and from 1860 until his death, he was a professor at the Pest Evangelical upper-grammar school. Alongside his specialty of the natural sciences, he also taught German and French.

Botanical work

In the 1830s, Dorner came into contact with other botanists, and in 1835 went on a botanical expedition with János Heuffel and Anton Rochel to the Banat. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, he retired from government work and instead pursued botanical studies.
Although Dorner intended to compose a Flora of Hungary with his botanical colleagues József Sadler and János Heuffel, the plans never came to fruition after the death of Sadler in 1849, and the retirement of Heuffel due to ill health. Instead, he wrote smaller monographic works and papers in Hungarian and foreign journals. By 1858, Dorner became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and subsequently published 167 articles in the academy's Bulletin. He was also a member of the Imperial-Royal Zoological-Botanical Society.
He was particularly interested in plant anatomy and plant physiology, and in turn, was a skilled microscopist.
The majority of Dorner's botanical specimens were collected within the present-day territory of Hungary, but are now found in herbaria worldwide. This includes the Meise Botanic Garden herbarium, the National Museum of Natural History, France, Kew Herbarium, Universalmuseum Joanneum, and the National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
He also named the following species:Carex trachyantha Dorner. Quercus cerris var. macrophylla Dorner.

Death and burial

After a long illness Dorner passed away in October 1873, and was subsequently buried in Plot 9, Row 4, Grave 70 of the Fiume Road Graveyard in Budapest. Before 2007, his grave was marked with a timber gabled cross but it has since been replaced with a stone obelisk.

Major publications

  • von Dorner, Joseph. 1839. . Pressburg.
  • von Dorner, Joseph. 1839., in Panorama der Oesterreichischen Monarchie oder malerisch-romantisches Denkbuch.
  • Dorner, Joseph. 1841. .
  • Dorner, Joseph. 1843. '
  • Dorner, Joseph. 1853. .
  • Az ásványtan elemei algymnasiumok és alreáliskolák számára, Pest, 1858
  • Az állattan elemei a gymnasium és ipartanoda alsóbb osztályai számára I–III., Pest, 1863–1864
  • A növénytan elemei a gymnasium és ipartanoda alsóbb osztályai számára, Pest, 1864
  • Dorner József. 1865. '.
  • von Dorner, Josef. 1867–1868. .