Georg Eberhard Rumphius
Georg Eberhard Rumpf, also: Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (* 1627 in Woelfersheim, County of Solms (now Wetterau ), Hesse, † June 13, 1702 in Castle Victoria, Island of Ambon, Moluccas, Dutch East Indies ) was a German - Dutch officer and administrative officer, botanist, naturalist and explorer. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Rumph. ".
Life
He was the son of the Counts - hanauischen architect Augustus Hull (1591-1666), from 1644 to 1648 in the service of the city of Hanau, and Anna Elisabeth Keller (? -1651 ) From Woelfersheim.
Hull served from 1645 to 1648 as a soldier in the Dutch army in Portugal. He then joined as an officer in the service of the " Dutch East India Company " and came in 1653 to the Moluccan island of Ambon (formerly Amboina ), where he worked as an inspector and, most recently served as Consul Dutch sub- governor. During this time, when the colonial administration, he devoted himself to natural history expeditions and finally received by the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina called the " Pliny Indicus ".
In his work " Amboinische rarities chamber " he described tropical shellfish, shells and minerals. But the work was hampered on his life's work Herbarium amboinense by heavy blows several times: 1669/1670 he went blind cataract, giving him his other nickname " Blind Seer of Ambon " earned, on February 17, 1674, he lost in a tsunami his wife Susanna and two small daughters. Joan Maetsuycker sent him secretaries and draftsman, so that he could continue his work, but on January 11, 1687 burned even his library. Yet Hull was never discouraged and continued to work undeterred. His manuscripts were held for decades by the Directors of the United East India Company partly under wraps and not released for publication. In 1692 went by sea to Amsterdam the manuscript and the illustrations of the Herbarium amboinense lost because they transport ship of the French fleet was sunk. Texts and drawings had been copied but in Batavia before shipment on behalf of John Camphuys, so that the work could be reconstructed. It was published posthumously in 1741 from the pressure. The Amsterdam Professor of Botany John Burmannus translated the texts into Latin and published the six volumes of the " Herbarium " as Latin- Dutch edition.
His son Paul August Hull was active in the second half of the 17th century as a draftsman and painter.
Works
- Amboinische rarities chamber or treatise of the steinschaalichten animals which one calleth snails and mussels. Kraus, Vienna in 1705, in 1766. The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet. Edited by E. M. Beekman. Yale Univ. Pr, New Haven, Conn 1999. ISBN 0-300-07534-0 (English ed )