Leopold Dippel

Georg Heinrich Leopold Dippel was a German botanist. He was the son of a royal Bavarian forester, Carl Friedrich Peter Dippel, and Sussanna Purpus. He attended schools in Kaiserslautern and Zweibrücken. From 1845, he studied at the Academy of Forestry in Aschaffenburg, until he graduated in 1848. During his time there he was a member of the Munich Corps Hubertia fraternity. He continued his studies in Jena under the tutelage of Matthias Jacob Schleiden. Under him, he learned more extensively about botany and pioneered his work in microscopy and his research on the structure of plant's bodies. From July 1869, he worked at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, as a professor of Botany and Zoology, Botany, and Cellular Histology. His interests turned towards Dendrology at this point. He brought many foreign trees and shrubs, mostly collected by his first cousin Carl Albert Purpus in North America and Mexico, and sent them to Germany. He was the rector of the Technical University of Darmstadt from 1870 to 1871 and the Dean of the Chemical-Technical School from 1882 to 1887. He retired at the end of the summer semester in 1896.