Wilhelm Hofmeister (18 May 1824 – 12 January 1877) was a German biologist and botanist. He „stands as one of the true giants in the history of biology and belongs in the same pantheon as Darwin and Mendel. Largely self-taught he was the first to study and establish alternation of generations and the details of sexual reproduction in the bryophytes. Hofmeister is widely credited with discovery of alternation of generations as a general principle in plant life. His proposal that alternation between a spore-bearing generation (sporophyte) and a gamete-bearing generation (gametophyte) constituted a unifying theory of plant evolution that was published in 1851. This was crucial in demonstrating that sexual reproduction occurred in plants, which was under extensive debate in the mid-1800s. He showed that products from both the pollen tube and egg were required. This discovery and unifying principle of plant reproduction occurred eight years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. After this book was published, Hofmeister became a leading proponent of Darwinism. We celebrate his 201^st birthday with an image of vine leaf…