Fredrik Emil Volmar Elfving (9 December 1854 – 21 June 1942) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish botanist, plant physiologist, and university administrator.

A lively and enthusiastic teacher, Elfving revolutionized the teaching of botany at the university by introducing laboratory courses that emphasized the study of plant physiology, rather than taxonomy, as had been the tradition.

His father, who was originally the son of a blacksmith, rose exceptionally high in the order of estates (a system of social hierarchy prevalent in Christian Europe), becoming a professor and district doctor [fi].

[3] Elfving developed an interest in natural history as a child, and became familiar with the local cryptogam flora – mosses, lichens, and algae.

His instructor, Sextus Otto Lindberg, found Elfving to be a talented student, and assisted and encouraged him with his botanical studies.

[7] From 1878 to 1879 he completed his studies in Germany, first learning cytology with Eduard Strasburger in Jena and then in Würzburg with Julius von Sachs.

[8] Also that year, Elfving published Anteckningar om finska Desmidieer ("Notes on Finnish Desmids"), in which he enumerated 258 species of the Desmidiales, nine of them new to science.

He then studied for a few months under George Engelmann in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and then with Gaston Bonnier and Émile Duclaux in Paris from December 1886 to March 1887.

[2] In 1885, Sextus Otto Lindberg proposed that Elfving should be appointed associate professor, emphasizing his outstanding record as a teacher.

In 1883, a year after Charles Darwin's death, the idea of placing a commemorative statue of him in the British Museum of Natural History spread throughout Europe.

[12] In the late nineteenth-century Finnish academic circles, some of the students and faculty from upper class-backgrounds were prejudiced against people from the lower social classes, whom the expansion of schooling in the 1880s had enabled to study at universities.

[14] In contrast, Ernst Gustaf Palmén, who was Elfving's colleague, explained that in his experience, the worst students actually came from upper-class families.

His research determined that the tips invariably turned in such a direction as to bring the longitudinal axis back into a horizontal position in the ground, a reaction caused by the force of gravity.

Frank believed the transversely geotropic organs had an upper side that faced upwards; Elfving showed that this was not true for rhizomes, since if they were turned round their own longitudinal axis 180°, they continued to grow without any torsion.

[15] In 1882, Elfving published the results of an investigation carried out in de Bary's laboratory into the flow of water through ligneous stems.

At the time, it was widely believed that the water did not flow through the lumina of the vessels, but in their walls, the so-called "inbibition theory" proposed by Julius von Sachs.

Elfving disproved the idea in an experiment in which he caused melted cocoa butter to be sucked into the stem of a freshly cut Taxus, which he then allowed to cool and harden.

In this work, he claimed that he had established by microscopic observation that the gonids (an old term in lichenology for the algal cells of the thallus) originated in the hyphae, and proclaimed that Schwenderer's theory must therefore be abandoned.

However, by 1913, it was well-established that the "gonids" in the lichen thallus are actual green and blue-green algal cells, and if Elfving's view were to be accepted, it would essentially overturn the entire taxonomy of cryptogams.

He published a continuation of his research 18 years later, titled Weitere Untersuchungen über Flechtengonidien ("Further studies on lichen gonidia"), which he started with the motto E pur si muove.

[23] As part of his duties as Professor of Botany, Elfving mentored a number of students who undertook research in plant physiology.

Regarding his personality, his former student Runar Collander noted: "Elfving stood in a class by himself, combining a strict sense of duty with an exceptional charm.

Collander writes of the "curious duality" of Elfving's nature: On the one hand he was a clear-headed, sober scientist, an empiricist and rationalist who hated imprecision of any kind.

He was extraordinarily prone to pursue peculiar ideas of his own, displaying a sovereign disregard for recognized authorities and received opinions.

Elfving was noted for his "highly developed historical sense" and his "skill in the production of vivid and sharply-etched portraits of personalities.

Two other texts he published were Växtanatomiska öfningar ("Exercises in plant anatomy") (1889) and Förare genom Växthusen i Helsingfors Botaniska Trädgärd (1904), a guide to Helsinki's botanical gardens aimed at both the general public as well as the first-year university student.

[29] The Department of Botany, which was completed in 1903 in Kaisaniemi, Helsinki, and now houses the University's Botanical Museum, was built on Elfving's initiative and according to his plans.

[25] He worked hard to acquire numerous species of shrubs and trees in his role as director of the Botanical Garden, and the greenhouses became a landmark attraction.