Franz Meyen

Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen (1804 to 1840) was a Prussian medical doctor and botanist, born in Tilsit in East Prussia. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin from 1823 to 1826 and then served as a military surgeon at the Charite in Berlin. In 1830 he wrote Phytotomie, the first major study of plant anatomy, and between 1830 and 1832 he took part in an expedition to South America aboard the Prinzess Luise, visiting Peru and Bolivia and describing species new to science such as the Humboldt penguin. In 1834 he became an associate professor of botany in Berlin and, with Heinrich Friedrich Link, co-edited a journal of plant physiology. He died in Berlin in 1840.