Dr. André Joseph Guillaume Henri 'Dok' Kostermans (

Purworejo Purworejo is a regency ( id, kabupaten) in the southern part of Central Java province in Indonesia. It covers an area of 1,034.82 km2 and had a population of 695,427 at the 2010 Census and 769,880 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate ...

, 1 July 1906 – Jakarta, 10 July 1994) was an Indonesian botanist of Dutch ancestry. He was born in Purworejo,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

, Dutch East Indies, and educated at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, taking his doctoral degree in 1936 with a paper on Surinamese Lauraceae. He spent most of his professional life studying the plants of

southeastern Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

, settled at Buitenzorg, later Bogor,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. At an early stage in his career he also contributed a number of family treatments to Pulle's ''Flora of Suriname''. Kostermans was especially interested in Lauraceae, Malvales (

Bombacaceae Bombacaceae were long recognised as a family of flowering plants or Angiospermae. The family name was based on the type genus ''Bombax''. As is true for many botanical names, circumscription and status of the taxon has varied with taxonomic point ...

and

Sterculiaceae Sterculiaceae was a family of flowering plant based on the genus ''Sterculia''. Genera formerly included in Sterculiaceae are now placed in the family Malvaceae, in the subfamilies: Byttnerioideae, Dombeyoideae, Helicteroideae and Sterculioideae. A ...

), and Dipterocarpaceae. In later years he turned his attention to Asian

Anacardiaceae The Anacardiaceae, commonly known as the cashew family or sumac family, are a family of flowering plants, including about 83 genera with about 860 known species. Members of the Anacardiaceae bear fruits that are drupes and in some cases produce ...

. He was a productive worker and published extensively on these and other groups. The

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Kostermansia ''Kostermansia malayana'', commonly known as the durian tuang or krepal, is a species of flowering plant in the mallow family, Malvaceae, that is endemic to Peninsular Malaysia. It is threatened by habitat loss Habitat destruction (also ter ...

'' Soegeng, of the family Bombacaceae, and over 50 species were named in his honour. Kostermans suffered a heart attack in March 1991, but his letter to his friend written in April 1991 stated "''some writing (including) putting the finishing touch to a fat manuscript on the Mango species (69 species) ... If I am lucky I shall have a chance to see it.''" Kostermans did live to see it published by Academic Press in 1993. He died in Indonesia in 1994.

References

ASPT NEWSLETTER 9(1) January 1995
URL accessed 26 March 2006.

External links

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110519134712/http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9679732 Image of grave {{DEFAULTSORT:Kostermans, Andre Joseph Guillaume Henri 1906 births 1994 deaths Deaths in Indonesia 20th-century botanists 20th-century Dutch botanists Indonesian people of Dutch descent Dutch people of Indonesian descent Dutch expatriates in Indonesia People from Purworejo Regency People of the Dutch East Indies Utrecht University alumni