Johann Amman

Johann Amman (1707 to 1741) was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the Royal Society and professor of botany at the Russian Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg. Born in Schaffhausen, he studied under Herman Boerhaave at Leiden and graduated as a physician in 1729, then came to England that year to help Hans Sloane curate his natural history collection. At the invitation of Johann Georg Gmelin he went on to St Petersburg and became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, regularly sending interesting plants such as Gypsophila paniculata back to Sloane, and he corresponded with Linnaeus between 1736 and 1740. In 1735 he founded the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences on Vasilyevsky Island. He is best known for his Stirpium Rariorum in Imperio Rutheno Sponte Provenientium Icones et Descriptiones, published in 1739, which describes some 285 plants from Eastern Europe and Ruthenia. The plant genus Ammannia was named for a different Amman, Paul Amman.