Carl Peter Thunberg
Carl Peter Thunberg (November 11, 1743 - August 8, 1828) was a Swedish naturalist. He has been called "the father of South African botany" and the "Japanese Linnaeus".Thunberg was born at JÃÂönkÃÂöping, and became a pupil of Carolus Linnaeus at Uppsala University. After graduating in medicine there in 1770 he travelled to Leiden and Amsterdam to study their botanical gardens and museums. He then continued his medical studies in Paris. He was then asked to travel to Japan in order to collect plants for Dutch botanical gardens. He obtained an appointment as surgeon in the Dutch East India Company, and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope in 1772.
Thunberg spent three years in South Africa, in order to learn the Dutch language and be able to pass himself off as a Dutchman, as Japan at that time was only open to protestant Dutch merchants. Whilst in Africa he made three expeditions into the interior, collecting both flora and fauna. In March 1775 he sailed to Java where he stayed for two months. In August he landed in Dejima, a small artificial island in Nagasaki bay. Thunberg spent his time there studying the flora, and even managed to travel to Tokyo.
Thunberg left Japan in November 1776, returning to Java, and then arriving in Sri Lanka in July 1777, where he again made a large collection of plants. He left in February 1778 and arrived back in Amsterdam in October.
In 1779 he visited England, and made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks. In 1781 he was appointed demonstrator of botany at Uppsala, and he succeeded the younger Linnaeus as professor of botany in 1784. He published his Flora japonica in 1784, and in 1788 he began to publish his travels. He completed his Prodomus plantarum in 1800, his Icones plantarum japonicarum in 1805, and his Flora capensis in 1813. He published numerous memoirs in the transactions of many Swedish and other scientific societies, of sixty-six of which he was an honorary member. He died near Uppsala.
A genus of tropical plants (Thunbergia), of the natural order Acanthaceae, which are cultivated as evergreen climbers, is named after him.
Thunberg is cited in naming some 254 species of both plants and animals (though significantly more plants than animals).
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 EncyclopÃÂædia Britannica.