Karl J. Niklas

Karl Joseph Niklas (born 1948) is an American botanist and paleobotanist who is a Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor Emeritus in the field of Plant Biology at the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. His work focuses on plant biomechanics, allometry and functional morphology. His research in plant evolutionary biology has included studies on early land plant diversification patterns and morphospaces.

Education Niklas earned his bachelor's degree at City College of New York. He earned his Ph.D. in paleobiology from the University of Illinois in 1974 and completed his post-doctoral research at Birkbeck College as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.

Selected works

Books Plant Biomechanics, 1992 Plant Allometry: The Scaling of Form and Process, 1994 The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, 1997 Plant Physics, 2012 (co-authored with Hanns-Christof Spatz) Plant Evolution: An Introduction to the History of Life, 2016 The Origins of Life: from Abiotic Chemistry to the first Cells. Karl J. Niklas, Thomas G. Owens, and Randy Wayne. 2025

Awards and distinctions John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship The Botanical Society of America’s Centennial Medal Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung prize for senior USA scientists Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science