Paul Hermann (botanist)

Paul Hermann (1646 to 1695) was a German-born physician and botanist who for fifteen years directed the Hortus Botanicus Leiden. Born in Halle, he studied theology and medicine at Wittenberg and botany at Leipzig, and graduated from the medical school at Padua in 1670. He then served the Dutch East India Company as a ship's medical officer in Ceylon from 1672 to 1677, where he assembled a scientific collection of the island's plants and other organisms. In 1679 he accepted the Chair of Botany at the University of Leiden, moved there in 1680 and set about making its garden the finest in Europe. His Paradisus batavus, describing the plants of the Leiden garden, appeared after his death in 1698, edited by William Sherard, and Carl Linnaeus later used his Ceylon collection when writing Flora Zeylanica and Species plantarum. He died in Leiden.