Sigrid Rissler
Sigrid Elisabet Alfhild Rissler was a Swedish botanist known for her work on monocotyledon anatomy. She studied at Stockholms högskola and published her significant work on vascular bundles in monocot stems in 1888, with self-drawn and lithographed plates that were praised for their exceptional technical accuracy. Besides her scientific work, Rissler was also a skilled artist who designed Art Nouveau furniture panels and created textile art, with some of her designs being preserved in Sweden's Nationalmuseum collection.
Biography
Sigrid Elisabet Alfhild Andersson was born on 2 January 1868 in Stockholm. Her parents were Anna Elisabeth Amanda and Nils Johan Andersson. Her father was a professor of botany at Lund University, and also worked at the Riksmuseum in Stockholm.Andersson enrolled at Stockholms högskola in 1885 and completed three years of systematic botany and chemistry under professors V.B. Wittrock and Gustaf Lagerheim; Wittrock later communicated her first paper, on the ontogeny of primary vascular bundles in monocot stems, to the Royal Swedish Academy's proceedings in 1887. The plates in that study were drawn and lithographed by Rissler herself and were praised by Botaniska Notiser for their "extraordinary accuracy in rendering scalariform thickenings". After graduation she spent two years in the histology laboratory at the Karolinska Institute, preparing serial sections of cereal seedlings for Julius von Sachs's comparative root-anatomy project, before marrying physician John G. Rissler in 1895. Rissler later became chief of the Sabbatsberg Hospital, in 1895. The couple had three children together: Maj-lis Rissler, Bo Rissler, and Gerd Elisabeth Rissler. Rissler died 31 October 1918 in Stockholm.