Johann Ernst Hebenstreit

Johann Ernst Hebenstreit (1703 to 1757) was a German physician and naturalist born in Neustadt an der Orla. He studied at the University of Leipzig, earning a philosophy degree in 1728 and a medical doctorate in 1729 with a dissertation on the medicinal powers of minerals, and in 1731 he became a member of the Leopoldina academy. That year Augustus II appointed him to lead an expedition to Africa to collect natural history specimens and wild animals for the royal menagerie; the mission was discontinued after the king died in 1733, and Hebenstreit returned to Leipzig as a professor of medicine. In 1737 he became professor of physiology, anatomy and surgery, and in 1748 dean of the medical faculty. His writings include an influential 1751 study of forensic medicine, Anthropologia Forensis, and a catalogue of the Richter collection of minerals and fossils. Linnaeus named the plant genus Hebenstreitia in his honor.