Valerius Cordus

Valerius Cordus was a German physician, botanist and pharmacologist, born in 1515 and dead in Rome in 1544 at the age of 29, who authored the first pharmacopoeia north of the Alps. His father Euricius Cordus, a physician, taught him botany and pharmacy, and he entered the University of Marburg at twelve. He lectured on medicine at Wittenberg from 1539 and drew on direct observation of living plants, a strength noted by later writers. His Dispensatorium was accepted by the Nuremberg city council in 1543 and printed in 1546. He is credited with a method of making ether by adding sulfuric acid to ethyl alcohol, around 1540, and the plant genus Cordia is named for him. Conrad Gessner published his remaining works after his death.