Leonhard Rauwolf

Leonhard Rauwolf, also spelled Leonhart Rauwolff, was a German physician, botanist and traveller, born in 1535 and died in 1596. He studied at the University of Wittenberg and then botany and medicine at Montpellier and Valence in southern France, where he was a pupil of Guillaume Rondelet, and in 1565 he set up a medical practice in his hometown of Augsburg. Between 1573 and 1575 he travelled through the Levant and Mesopotamia to search for herbal medicine supplies, a trip made possible by his brother-in-law trading firm, and he was the first European botanist of the post-medieval era to travel in Syria and Mesopotamia. He published botanical descriptions with an herbarium and, in 1582, a German travel narrative that was later translated into English and Dutch. He was among the first Europeans to describe the drinking of coffee.