Nathanael Pringsheim was born into a Jewish family in Silesia in 1823. He grew up at a time when the natural sciences were undergoing profound change. Innovations in microscopy offered access to structures and processes invisible to the unaided eye and opened an entirely new world for biological research.
His education brought him into contact with medicine, natural history and the developing discipline of plant science. Rather than treating plants primarily as objects to be described and classified, Pringsheim became fascinated by living processes: growth, reproduction, development and the behaviour of cells.
