Karl Joseph Niklas (born 1948) is an American botanist and paleobotanist. He is a Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology Emeritus in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, where he was a member of the faculty from 1978. His research applies physics, engineering and mathematics to plant form, function, and evolution, with particular attention to plant biomechanics and allometry. He is also known for quantitative studies of the plant fossil record.
Education Niklas earned his bachelor's degree at City College of New York. He earned his Ph.D. in paleobiology from the University of Illinois in 1974 and completed his post-doctoral research at Birkbeck College as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow.
Career After working as a curator at the New York Botanical Garden, Niklas joined the Cornell University faculty in 1978. He was promoted to full professor in 1985 and appointed Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in 2000. Niklas served as president of the Botanical Society of America from 2008 to 2009 and as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany from 1995 to 2004. He has published over 480 peer-reviewed papers and authored five books on plant biology topics. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.
Selected works
Books Plant Biomechanics, 1992 () Plant Allometry: The Scaling of Form and Process, 1994 () The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, 1997 () Plant Physics, 2012 (co-authored with Hanns-Christof Spatz) () Plant Evolution: An Introduction to the History of Life, 2016 () The Origins of Life: from Abiotic Chemistry to the first Cells. Karl J. Niklas, Thomas G. Owens, and Randy Wayne. 2025
Awards and distinctions John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship The Botanical Society of America’s Centennial Medal Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung prize for senior USA scientists Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
References