Georg Balthasar Metzger

Georg Balthasar Metzger was a German physician and scientist, born in Schweinfurt on 23 September 1623 and died in Tubingen on 9 October 1687. He took a master of arts at Jena in 1646 and a medical doctorate at Basel in 1650. He is one of the four founding members of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, established in Schweinfurt in 1652. In 1661 the Duke of Wurttemberg appointed him to the University of Tubingen to improve its teaching of anatomy and surgery, and from 1681 to 1688 he directed the university medical garden, which became the botanical garden of the University of Tubingen. He was a Lutheran and was succeeded in the garden by his student Rudolf Jacob Camerer.