Edith Kann

Edith Kann (19 April 1907, Krems an der Donau – 7 October 1987, Vienna) was an Austrian teacher and botanist, specializing in phycology. She was a leading expert on blue-green algae. Lunzer See (Lake Lunz) as seen looking northward from the southern shore. When Kann worked here on her dissertation, only the house on the left was standing.

Biography Her father was a civil engineer and, in 1908, head of the construction project of the Wachau Railway in Willendorf when the famous Venus of Willendorf was found there on August 7, 1908. As a child, Edith Kann lived first in Spitz and from 1911 in Vienna. From 1918 to 1926 she attended the Realgymnasium for civil servants' daughters Vienna VIII, after which she completed the Lehramt (teacher qualification) for natural history and geography at the University of Vienna. In 1930 and 1931 she took part in limnological summer courses at the biological research station at Lunz am See and began her dissertation under Franz Ruttner (1882–1981) on the ecology of the littoral algae of the Lunzer See (Lake Lunz). On March 21, 1931, she received her doctorate "sub auspiciis Praesidentis" from the University of Vienna. On June 6, 1932, she passed her teaching examination. Because she became unemployed after the probationary year as a result of the global economic crisis, Kann went to Ankara as a private teacher from 1935 to 1936. When she returned to Vienna in 1937/38, she took a bioeconomics course at the university, but the final exam was abruptly cancelled due to the Anschluss. She was often involved with lectures at SIL conferences and always at limnological summer courses at Lake Lunz.

Two cataract operations in 1979 and 1980 did not curtail her studies using microscopy. Not until 1987 did her phycological studies end — in that year, she suffered a devastating stroke on August 4 in Lunz and died on October 7 in Vienna.

She was the sole author of 30 publications and co-author of 6 publications. 1973 1976