Karl J. Niklas (born 1948) is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Plant Biology at Cornell University.[1] He is best known for his work on plant biomechanics, allometry, and functional morphology, and for his long-standing contributions to understanding plant evolutionary biology, particularly early land plant evolutionary diversification patterns and morphospaces.[2]
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Niklas completed his undergraduate studies at the City College of New York. He earned his Ph.D. in paleobiology from the University of Illinois in 1974. He carried out his post-doctoral work at Birkbeck College in London as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow.[2]
Niklas was curator for the New York Botanical Garden. He joined the faculty at Cornell in 1978. In 1985 he was named full professor and appointed to his current chair in 2000. He is the author of over 290 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three major books, all published by the University of Chicago Press. He is a member of the Botanical Society of America and served as its President (2008 – 2009) and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Botany (1995 – 2004).[2]