Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch

Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch (1771 to 1849) was a German medical doctor and botanist from Kusel, a town that in his lifetime belonged first to the Holy Roman Empire, then to France, and then to the Kingdom of Bavaria. He studied medicine at the universities of Jena and Marburg and worked as a state physician, first at Trarbach and from 1798 at Kaiserslautern. In 1824 he became professor of medicine and botany at the University of Erlangen, where he also directed the botanical garden and remained for the rest of his life. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1833. His best known writings are a catalogue of the flora of the Palatinate from 1814 and a synopsis of German and Swiss flora published in 1835 to 1837. Two plant genera, Kochia and Eokochia, are named in his honour. Late in life a broken hip kept him bedridden, yet he went on teaching his pupils in his room.