Werner Walter Hugo Paul Rothmaler (born 20 August 1908 in Sangerhausen, died 13 April 1962 in Leipzig) was a German botanist and from 1953 until 1962 head of the Institute for Agricultural Biology of the University of Greifswald.
Since his lack of school qualifications made university study impossible Rothmaler was offered a position as working student in Jena with the botanists Theodor Herzog, Otto Renner and Erwin Brünning.
He then spent some time working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin under Fritz von Wettstein.
In June 1943 he managed to obtain exemption from the matriculation requirements and to graduate at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin with the thesis Studies of the Vegetation of Southwestern Portugal.
In 1947 Rothmaler was awarded his doctorate from the University of Halle with a still unpublished work on the genus Lachemilla (family Rosaceae, synonym of Alchemilla[5]), which is widespread in Central and South America.
[7][8] In 1954 he was made founding President of the GDR's Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung wissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse (Society for the dissemination of scientific knowledge), a post he held until his death.
He produced more than 190 publications, including a monograph on the genus Antirrhinum (1956) and his most famous work, the Exkursionsflora von Deutschland (Excursion flora of Germany) (3 volumes) (1966).
The fourth volume also includes critical taxa of vascular plants, i.e. subspecies, varieties or ecotypes in large numbers.
In 2008, to mark the centenary of his birth, on the initiative of the Lamarck Circle he founded, a plaque was attached to the former family home in Greifswald.