Gustav Niessl von Mayendorf

Who was Gustav Niessl von Mayendorf?

Gustav Niessl von Mayendorf, was an Austrian astronomer and mycologist.

Niessl, the son of an artillery officer, studied at the Polytechnic in Vienna in 1857 and became assistant to practical geometry. In 1859 he took the chair of practical geometry at the Technical College in Brno, where he became a full professor in 1860 and later taught applied geometry, astronomy and higher geodesy. He became the director in 1868/1869. After this technical college, he was its rector in 1877/78 and 1888/89. In 1907 he retired. For several decades he was secretary of the Natural Science Society in Brno.

Niessl was first engaged in geodesy. As an astronomer, he was employed with Niessl meteor orbits and also wrote the article in the Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Niessl was also a significant mycologist and mushroom collector, whose collection at the Botanical State Collection Munich went. He was regarded as an expert in the flora of Moravia and Silesia, and had close contact with the botanist Gottlob Ludwig Rabenhorst.