Franz Karl Mertens

Franz Karl Mertens (also Franz Carl Mertens ) (born April 3, 1764 in Bielefeld , Minden-Ravensberg , Prussia , † June 19, 1831 in Bremen ) was a German botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Mert. “His son was the botanist Karl Heinrich Mertens .

Life

Mertens was the son of Clamor Mertens, an impoverished nobleman, so that there was no money for his schooling. He was tutored first at home and later with the son of a city official. Later he was able to find some benefactors who allowed him to study theology and languages at the Friedrichs University in Halle . After his studies he was offered a position as a teacher at the commercial school in Bremen . He later became a professor and head of the school. Here he discovered his love for botany. He made friends with Albrecht Wilhelm Roth , an Oldenburg physicist and botanist. Together, the two made several trips through Europe to Scandinavia to collect plants. Mertens described new algae and illustrated all algae in Roth's 3rd volume of Catalecta botanica (1806). With Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch from Erlangen he published the 3rd edition of the five-volume Flora Deutschlands by Johann Christoph Röhling .

Mertens' sketchbooks and letters came into the possession of the Hunt Botanical Library in 1962 . Among the 263 received letters from and to Mertens, the correspondence with Carl Adolph Agardh , Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent , Augustin-Pyrame de Candolle and Adelbert von Chamisso is worth mentioning.

Honors

Mertens named in honor of Albrecht Wilhelm Roth genus Mertensia from the family of Borage Family (Boraginaceae). In 1797 Mertens was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

literature

Wilhelm Olbers Focke : Mertens, Franz Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, p. 470 f.
CL Stachow: Professor Dr. Franz Carl Mertens, head of the commercial school in Bremen. In: Medical associations to Bremen: Biographical sketches of deceased Bremen doctors and natural scientists. A ceremony for the twentieth meeting of German natural scientists and doctors in Bremen. Heyse, Bremen 1844, pp. 239–392, online , (also Separatum approx. 1845).

Web links

Works by and about Franz Karl Mertens in the German Digital Library
Author entry and list of the plant names described for Franz Karl Mertens at the IPNI
Franz Carl Mertens (1764-1831). Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, accessed December 22, 2009 .

Individual evidence

↑ Franz Carl Mertens (1764–1831) , Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation ( Memento from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Mertens, Franz Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Mertens, Franz Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German botanist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 3, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH	June 19, 1831
Place of death	Bremen

[1] Franz Carl Mertens (1764–1831) , Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation ( Memento from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

[Burkhardt_2018-2] Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .