Brother Marie-Victorin was a Christian Brother and botanist, best known as the father of the Jardin botanique de Montréal. Although Marie-Victorin is on record as having suggested that Montréal build its own botanical gardens as early as 1919, the Jardin was only authorized by Montreal mayor Camillien Houde in 1929, and work only began on construction in 1931. Subsequent administrations, both municipal and provincial, opposed the Jardin as a boondoggle; however, …

Luca Ghini (1490 - May 4, 1556) was an Italian physician and botanist, notable as the creator of the first recorded herbarium, as well as the first botanical garden in Europe. Ghini was born in Imola, son of a notary, and studied medicine at the University of Bologna. By 1527 he was lecturing there on medicinal plants, and eventually became a professor. He moved to Pisa in 1544, while maintaining his home in Bologna.

Pierre Poivre (August 23, 1719 - January 6, 1786) was a French horticulturalist born in Lyon. In his early 20s he was a missionary in Far Eastern locations such as Cochinchina, Guangzhou and Macao. In 1745 as member of the French East India Company, on a journey to the East Indies he was involved in a naval battle with the British when he was struck by a cannonball on the wrist. This injury required amputation of part of his right arm.

Ulisse Aldrovandi (11 September 1522 - 10 November 1605) was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bologna's botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. Carolus Linnaeus and the comte de Buffon reckoned him the father of natural history studies. He is usually referred to, especially in older literature, as Aldrovandus.

John Fothergill (March 8, 1712 - December 26, 1780), English physician, was born of a Quaker family at Carr End in Yorkshire. He took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh in 1736, and after visiting continental Europe in 1740, settled in London, where he gained an extensive practice. In the epidemics of influenza in 1775 and 1776 he is said to have had sixty patients daily. In his leisure he made a study of conchology and botany; and at Upton, near Stratford, …

John Tradescant the elder ("ca" 1570s – 15/16 April, 1638), father of John Tradescant the younger, was an English naturalist, gardener, collector and traveller, probably born in Suffolk, England. He began his career as head gardener to the Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House, who initiated Tradescant in travelling by sending him to the Low Countries for fruit trees in 1610/11. He was kept on by Robert's son William, to produce gardens at the family's London house, …

Carl Ludwig Willdenow (August 22, 1765 - July 10, 1812) was a German botanist and pharmacist. Willdenow was born in Berlin and studied medicine and botany at the University of Halle. He was a director of the Botanical garden of Berlin from 1801 until his death. There he studied many South American plants, brought back by the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. He was interested in the adaptation of plants to climate, …

Sir Robert Sibbald (April 15 1641-August 1722), Scottish physician and antiquary, was born in Edinburgh. He was the son of David Sibbald (brother of Sir James Sibbald) and Margaret Boyd (Jan 1606-July 10, 1672). Educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Leiden, and Paris, he took his doctor's degree at the University of Angers in 1662, and soon afterwards settled as a physician in Edinburgh. In 1667 with Sir Andrew Balfour he started the botanical garden in Edinburgh, …

Paolo Silvio Boccone (1633 - 1704) was an Italian botanist from Sicily, whose interest in plants had been sparked by a visit to the botanical gardens ("l'Orto Botanico") founded in Messina by the Roman doctor Pietro Castelli, who became his instructor. Born in Palermo, he traveled across Sicily, Corsica, Paris, and London and later became a lecturer in Padua. He published "Recherches et observations naturelles" (Paris, 1671), …

Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius, seigneur de Watènes, was the Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th century scientific horticulturists. He studied at Montpellier with the famous medical professor Guillaume Rondelet, though he never practiced medicine.

Pietro Castelli (1574-1662), Italian physician and botanist. Born at Rome, he was graduated in 1617, studied under the botanist Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), and was professor at Rome from 1597 to 1634, when he went to Messina. He laid out the botanical gardens at Messina in 1635, where he cultivated many exotic medicinal plants (now the Orto Botanico "Pietro Castelli" of the University of Messina). The botanist Paolo Boccone (1633-1704) studied under Castelli there.

Humphry Marshall (October 10, 1722 - November 5, 1801) was an American botanist and plant dealer. He was born in Marshallton, Pennsylvania (then called West Bradford), and lived in Bradford Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the cousin of botanist John Bartram and William Bartram. Like many early American botantists, he was a Quaker. By trade, Marshall was a stonemason and farmer, but took up the study of natural history.

Carl Sigismund Kunth (June 18, 1788—March 22, 1850; also Karl Sigismund Kunth or anglicized as Charles Sigismund Kunth) was a German botanist. He is known for being one of the first to study and categorise plants from the American continents, publishing "Nova genera et species plantarum quas in peregrinatione ad plagam aequinoctialem orbis novi collegerunt Bonpland et Humboldt" (7 vols., Paris, 1815-1825).

Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart (1742-1795) was a German botanist, a pupil of Carolus Linnaeus at Uppsala University, and later Director of the Botanical Garden of Hannover, where he produced several major botanical works between 1780-1793.

Frederik Ruysch was a Dutch botanist and anatomist, remembered for his developments in anatomical preservation and the creation of dioramas or scenes incorporating human parts. Frederik Ruysch was born in The Hague as the son of a minor government functionary. Fascinated by anatomy he started to study at the university in Leiden, graduating in 1664 under Franciscus Sylvius. He married the daughter of a dutch architect, named Pieter Post.

Giulio Pontedera (1688 - 1757) was an Italian botanist. He was professor of botany at Padua, and director of the botanical garden there. Although he rejected Carolus Linnaeus' system, Linnaeus was a correspondent of Pontedera's, and named the genus "Pontederia" after him.

Johann Hedwig, also seen as Johannes Hedwig, was a German botanist notable for his studies of mosses (for which he is sometimes called the father of bryology), in particular the observation of sexual reproduction in the cryptogams. He was born in Romania, and studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, receiving an M.D. in 1759. He then practiced as a physician for the next twenty years, during which time he pursued botany as a hobby, …

John Muirhead Macfarlane was a Scottish botanist. He was born and educated in Scotland, where he occupied several different academic positions at the University of Edinburgh before emigrating to the United States to assume a professorial chair at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893. He held this position until retirement in 1920. He played a leading role in organising and diversifying the botanical garden of the University of Pennsylvania.

Isaac Swainson (1746 - 1812) was the son of John Swainson (d1750), yeoman, of High House, Hawkshead, Lancashire. He was famous for his botanical garden, which was largely funded from the profits of a herbal remedy for venereal disease, and a plant genus is named after him. For his commercial activities in the latter field, he has been called a "radical quack". He was a relative of William Swainson, the naturalist.

Rudolf Jakob Camerarius or Camerer was a German botanist and physician. Camerarius was born at Tübingen, and became professor of medicine and director of the botanical gardens at Tübingen in 1687. He is chiefly known for his investigations on the reproductive organs of plants ("De sexu plantarum epistola" (1694)). While other botanists, such as John Ray and Nehemiah Grew, had observed that plants seemed to have sex in some form, …

Karl (Carl) Alexander Anselm Freiherr von Hügel was an Austrian army officer, diplomat, botanist and explorer, now primarily remembered for his travels in northern India during the 1830s. During his lifetime he was celebrated by the European ruling classes for his botanical garden and his introduction of plants and flowers from New Holland (Australia) to Europe's public gardens. Von Hügel was born in Regensburg (then Ratisbon), Bavaria, …

Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet (1720–1778) was a French pharmacist, botanist and explorer. Born in Salon-de-Provence, he joined the French East India Company and in 1752 was sent to Mauritius (then known as "l'Île de France") to establish a pharmacy and a botanical garden. He worked there for nine years. During this time he was accused of having destroyed plants from the collection of Pierre Poivre, being jealous of the latter's success.

Christian Horace Benedict Alfred Moquin-Tandon was a French naturalist and doctor. Moquin-Tandon was professor of zoology at Marseilles from 1829 until 1833, when he was appointed professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens at Toulouse. In 1850, he was sent by the French government to Corsica to study the island's flora. In 1853, he moved to Paris, later becoming director of the Jardin des Plantes and the Académie des Sciences.

Jacob Theodor Klein was a Prussian jurist, historian, botanist, mathematician and diplomat. He was also a correspondent of Friedrich Christian Lesser and a member of the Royal Society in London. Klein was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland). His son-in-law was Daniel Gralath, a physicist who would become mayor.

Friedrich Ernst Ludwig Fischer was a Russian botanist, born in Germany. He was director of the St Petersburg botanical garden from 1823 to 1850. <center >The standard botanical author abbreviation Fisch. is applied to plants described by this botanist, who should also appear on this list.</center >

Karl Fritsch (24th February 1864 - 17th January 1934) was an Austrian botanist. He was born in Vienna and educated mainly at the University of Vienna, obtaining his PhD degree in 1886 and his Habilitation in 1890. In 1900 he moved to the University of Graz as professor of Systematic Botany, where he built up the botanical institute. In 1910 he was appointed as director of the university's botanical garden, and in 1916 the new institute acquired its own building.

Jean Baptiste Louis Claude Theodore Leschenault de la Tour (November 13, 1773 - March 14, 1826) was a French botanist and ornithologist. Leschenault de la Tour was chief botanist on Nicolas Baudin's expedition to Australia between 1800 and 1803. He collected a great many new specimens in 1801 and 1802, but in April 1803 he was so ill that he had to be put ashore at Timor.

Henry Octave Cyril Vereecke (1906-04-04-2002-06-16), better known as Harry Oakman, was an Australian horticulturalist and writer. An immigrant from Belgium, Oakman wrote numerous illustrated books on gardening and, as a public landscaper, enjoyed enormous influence over the design of open spaces in Brisbane, Canberra, and Newcastle. Oakman was born in Lommel, in the province of Limburg, Belgium. His mother died when he was two years old, …

Carl Reinhold Sahlberg was a Finnish naturalist, primarily an entomologist with beetles as his speciality. In 1818 Carl Reinhold Sahlberg succeeded Carl Niclas Hellenius as professor of economy and natural history at Finland’s then only University in Turku (Åbo), the Academy of Åbo. In 1827 the town and the university were destroyed by fire.

Franz Josef Niedenzu (November 29, 1857 - September 30, 1937) was a German botanist. For most of his career was he was a professor and rector at the "Lyceum Hosianum" in Braunsberg, East Prussia (presently Braniewo, Poland). Niedenzu also established a botanical garden in Braunsberg. Niedenzu is remembered for his work with the botanical family Malpighiaceae. He identified numerous new species, as well as six genera; "Alcoceratothrix" ("Byrsonima"), …

Johann Heinrich Robert Göppert was a German botanist and paleontologist. He was born in Sprottau, Lower Saxony, and died at Breslau. In 1831 he became a professor of botany, as well as curator of the botanical gardens in Breslau. In 1852 he became director of the botanical gardens. He was particularly known for his scientific work in paleobotany, and he published many articles in this field. Göppert also did extensive research involving the formation of coal and amber, …

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