Adam Afzelius
Adam Afzelius (1750–1837) was a Swedish botanist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Afzelius was born at Larv in Västergötland in 1750. He was appointed teacher of oriental languages at Uppsala University in 1777, and in 1785 demonstrator of botany. In 1793, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
From 1792 he spent some years on the west coast of Africa, and in 1797-1798 acted as secretary of the Swedish embassy in London. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 19 April 1798. Returning to Sweden, he again took up his position as botanices demonstrator at Uppsala, and was in 1802 elected president of the "Zoophytolithic Society" (later called the Linnaean Institute). In 1812, he became professor of materia medica at the university. He died in Uppsala in 1837. In addition to various botanical writings, he published the autobiography of Carolus Linnaeus in 1823.
His brother, Johan Afzelius (1753–1837) was professor of chemistry at Uppsala; and another brother, Pehr von Afzelius (1760–1843; the "von" was added when he was ennobled), who became professor of medicine at Uppsala in 1801, was distinguished as a medical teacher and practitioner.
In 1857, the plant species Anubias afzelii was named after him by Heinrich Wilhelm Schott.[1]
Works
- Genera Plantarum Guineensium 1804
References
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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Afzelius, Adam. |
- ↑ Schott, H. (December 1857). "Aroideen Skizzen" (PDF). Oesterreichisches Botanisches Wochenblatt (in German and Latin) 7 (50): 398–399. doi:10.1007/BF02071618. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
- ↑ "Author Query for 'Afzel.'". International Plant Names Index.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Afzelius, Adam". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Pont, A. C. 1995 The Dipterist C. R. W. Wiedemann (1770–1840). His life, work and collections. Steenstrupia 21 125-154
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