Georg Franz Hoffmann

Georg Franz Hoffmann was a German botanist and lichenologist, born on 13 January 1760 in Marktbreit and died on 17 March 1826 in Moscow. After graduating from the University of Erlangen in 1786 he worked there as a professor of botany from 1787 to 1792, and from 1792 to 1803 he was head of the botany department and director of the botanical garden of Göttingen University. Already a famous botanist, particularly for his work on lichens, he settled in Moscow in January 1804, where he directed the department of botany at the University of Moscow and its botanical garden. His works include a description of the cryptogamic plants called lichens, a nomenclator of fungi, a history of willows and a flora of Germany, and in 1787 Olof Swartz dedicated the genus Hoffmannia of the madder family to him.