Carl Peter Thunberg

Carl Peter Thunberg was a Swedish naturalist and physician, born in Jonkoping in 1743, who became one of the best-known pupils of Carl Linnaeus. After studying at Uppsala University and in Paris, Amsterdam and Leiden, he entered the service of the Dutch East India Company as a surgeon and spent seven years travelling in southern Africa and Asia, including a stay in Japan. He collected and described many plants and animals that were new to European science and wrote on the cultures he met, and he is remembered as the father of South African botany and as the Japanese Linnaeus. Back in Sweden he was appointed botanical demonstrator at Uppsala in 1777 and professor of medicine and natural philosophy in 1781, and his Flora Japonica of 1784 remains a landmark of East Asian botany.