Lorenz Hiltner

Lorenz Hiltner (1862 to 1923) was a German agronomist and microbiologist, known for developing the concept of the rhizosphere and for pioneering the field of microbial ecology. Born at Neumarkt in the Kingdom of Bavaria, he studied natural sciences at Nuremberg and at Naples. In 1885 he became assistant at the Tharandt Plant Physiology Research Station, where he studied the symbiosis of legumes with root nodule bacteria and helped develop the first cultures of rhizobium bacteria. He took a doctorate at Erlangen in 1892 with a thesis on plant diseases caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea, directed the Royal Institute of Agriculture and Botany in Munich from 1902 and became professor at the Technical University of Munich in 1903. In April 1904 he introduced the term rhizosphere, the region of soil directly influenced by root secretions and associated microorganisms. He died in Munich in 1923.