Karl Heinrich Mertens

Karl Heinrich Mertens , often just Heinrich Mertens , (* May 7, 1796 in Bremen , † September 29, 1830 in Kronstadt (Russia) ) was a German doctor and botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is K.Mert.

biography

Karl Heinrich Mertens was the son of Franz Karl Mertens , a German botanist. He also studied botany. In 1813 and 1815 he voluntarily took part in the campaigns against Napoleon and got to know several French botanists. He also spent some time in England and then studied medicine and natural sciences in Göttingen . From 1821 he was a doctor in Bremen, but in 1824 he went to St. Petersburg to take part in Otto von Kotzebue 's trips . He didn't succeed and he practiced as a doctor in St. Petersburg until he joined Friedrich Benjamin von Lütke's (1826–1829) circumnavigation . From this trip he took numerous zoological and botanical finds with him, which he began to investigate in St. Petersburg. He was made a member of the St. Petersburg Academy and joined an expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1830. However, the expedition was not allowed to go ashore in Iceland. On the return voyage, typhus broke out on the ship , an illness of which he died after arriving in St. Petersburg.

The species epithet of the scientific name of the mountain hemlock ( Tsuga mertensiana ) was named after Karl Heinrich Mertens . He had discovered the species in what is now Borough Sitka in Alaska .

swell

Wilhelm Olbers Focke: Mertens, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, p. 471 f.
Andreas W. Daum : German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser (Eds.): Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I. Berghahn Books, New York 2019, ISBN 978-1-78920-028-7 , Pp. 79-102 (English).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Schütt, Weisgerber, Schuck, Lang, Stimm, Roloff: Lexicon of conifers . Nikol, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-933203-80-5 , p. 629 .
↑ ^a ^b Focke: Mertens, Heinrich
^ Mertens, Karl (Carl) Heinrich (1796-1830). In: The International Plant Name Index. Retrieved April 24, 2011 .
^ Andreas W. Daum: German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser (ed.): Exploration and entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I . Berghahn, New York 2019, p. 87, 90, 93, 95 .

personal data
SURNAME	Mertens, Karl Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Mertens, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German doctor and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 7, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bremen
DATE OF DEATH	September 29, 1830
Place of death	Kronstadt (Russia)

[LdN629-1] Schütt, Weisgerber, Schuck, Lang, Stimm, Roloff: Lexicon of conifers . Nikol, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-933203-80-5 , p. 629 .

[Focke-2] Focke: Mertens, Heinrich

[IPNI-3] Mertens, Karl (Carl) Heinrich (1796-1830). In: The International Plant Name Index. Retrieved April 24, 2011 .

[4] Andreas W. Daum: German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser (ed.): Exploration and entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I . Berghahn, New York 2019, p. 87, 90, 93, 95 .