Finish-born botanist William Nyland

Finish-born botanist William Nylander taught at the university of Helsinki for a number of years and later moved to Paris, where he lived until his dealth at the end of the nineteenth century. During the second half of the last century, he became a prominent figure in the field of lichenology.
Botanists from all over the world sent samples to his laboratory to be analyzed and classified. It can be said without exaggeration that four out of five lichens bear his name.
He was the first to realise the important of using chemical reagents in the taxonomy of lichens. He selected the most common reagents used by the chemists of his time. Lichenologists all over the world still used these reagents, including tincture of iodine and hypochlorite, in their laboratories during the first half of the twentieth century, a Japanese named Arahina added only one chemical product – P - Phenol diamines.
Nylander was also responsible for discovering that the atmosphere of big cities hindered the lichens' development and caused them to disappear. Now they are used to detect atmospheric pollution.
Nevertheless, he considered lichens to be simple plants and vehemently opposed the widely accepted modern theories that lichens are a compound species formed by two discordant elements; algae and fungi.