Franz Carl Mertens

Franz Karl Mertens ( Franz Carl Mertens ) ( born April 3, 1764 in Bielefeld, † June 19, 1831 in Bremen ) was a German botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Mert ".. His son was the botanist Karl Heinrich Mertens ( 1796-1830 ).

Biography

Mertens was the son of Clamor Mertens, an impoverished nobleman, so that there was no money for his education. He was first at home and later taught together 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 University of Halle. After studying him a job as a teacher at the trade school in Bremen was offered. He later became a professor and head of the school. Here he discovered his love for botany.

He made ​​friends with Albrecht Wilhelm Roth (1757-1834), a physicist and botanist Oldenburg. Together, the two took several trips through Europe to Scandinavia to collect plants. Mertens described and illustrated all new algae algae in Roth's third band of Catalecta botanica (1806 ). Along with Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch of Erlangen, he published the third edition of the five-volume Flora of Germany by Johann Christoph Röhling ( 1757-1813 ).

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

In the Named for Albrecht Wilhelm Roth Mertensia genus of the family of borage family ( Boraginaceae ).