Albert Bernhard Frank

Albert Bernhard Frank (1839 to 1900) was a German botanist, plant pathologist and mycologist, born in Dresden. He is credited with coining the word mycorrhiza in an 1885 paper on the root symbiosis by which certain trees are nourished by underground fungi, and in 1877 he introduced the term symbiosis to describe the nature of lichens. King Wilhelm I of Prussia had commissioned him to develop practical methods of truffle cultivation; the project did not succeed, but it led Frank to work out the nature and development of mycorrhizae. The bacterial genus Frankia and the family Frankiaceae are named after him, and he died in Berlin.