Johann Amman, Johannes Amman or Иоганн Амман (22 December 1707 – 14 December 1741) was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and professor of botany at the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Notable work

He is best known for his ''Stirpium Rariorum in Imperio Rutheno Sponte Provenientium Icones et Descriptiones'' published in 1739 with descriptions of some 285 plants from

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

and

Ruthenia ''Ruthenia'' is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Rus'. Originally, the term ''Rus' land'' referred to a triangular area, which mainly corresponds to the tribe of Polans in Dnieper Ukraine. ''Ruthenia' ...

(now

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

). The plates are unsigned, though an engraving on the dedicatory leaf of the work is signed "Philipp Georg Mattarnovy", a Swiss-Italian engraver, Filippo Giorgio Mattarnovi (1716–1742), who worked at the St. Petersburg Academy.

Life

He was born in

Schaffhausen Schaffhausen (; ; ; ; ), historically known in English as Shaffhouse, is a list of towns in Switzerland, town with historic roots, a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in northern Switzerland, and the capital of the canton of Schaffh ...

. Amman was a student of

Herman Boerhaave Herman Boerhaave (, 31 December 1668 – 23 September 1738Underwood, E. Ashworth. "Boerhaave After Three Hundred Years." ''The British Medical Journal'' 4, no. 5634 (1968): 820–25. .) was a Dutch chemist, botanist, Christian humanist, and ph ...

Leyden Leiden ( ; ; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 127,046 (31 January 2023), but the city forms one densely connecte ...

from where he graduated as a physician in 1729. He came from

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

in 1729 to help

Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British ...

curate his natural history collection. Sloane was founder of the

Chelsea Physic Garden The Chelsea Physic Garden was established as the Apothecaries' Garden in London, England, in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to grow plants to be used as medicines. This four acre physic garden, the term here referring to the scie ...

and originator of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. Amman went on to St Petersburg at the invitation of

Johann Georg Gmelin Johann Georg Gmelin (8 August 1709 – 20 May 1755) was a German naturalist, botanist and geographer. Early life and education Gmelin was born in Tübingen, the son of a professor at the University of Tübingen. He was a gifted child and began ...

(1709–1755) and became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, regularly sending interesting plants, such as '' Gypsophila paniculata'', back to Sloane.

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

maintained a lively correspondence with Amman between 1736 and 1740. Amman founded the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences on

Vasilyevsky Island Vasilyevsky Island (, Vasilyevsky Ostrov, V.O.) is an island in Saint Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia, bordered by the Bolshaya Neva River, Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva Rivers (in the delta of the Neva River) in the south and northeast ...

in St Petersburg in 1735. In 1739 he married Elisabetha Schumacher, daughter of

Johann Daniel Schumacher Johann Daniel Schumacher (Russian: Ива́н Дани́лович Шума́хер; German: Johann Daniel von Schumacher; 5 February 1690 – 14 June 1761) was the secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and director of the Library of the Russ ...

, the court librarian in St Petersburg. He died in

Naming

Ammannia ''Ammannia'' is a genus of around 100 species of plants often referred to as redstems from wet areas in Americas, America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Several species are grown as decorative plants in aquariums. The genus was named (but ...

'' of the

Lythraceae Lythraceae is a family (biology), family of flowering plants, including 32 genus, genera, with about 620 species of Herbaceous plant, herbs, shrubs, and trees. The larger genera include ''Cuphea'' (275 spp.), ''Lagerstroemia'' (56), ''Nesaea (pl ...

was named not for Johann Amman, but for Paul Amman (1634–1691), botanist, physiologist and director of the ''Hortus Medicus'' at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

and who published work on

Materia medica ''Materia medica'' ( lit.: 'medical material/substance') is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing (i.e., medications). The term derives f ...

in 1675. Johann Amman is denoted by the author abbreviation Amman when

citing A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

botanical name A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the ''International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN) and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar or cultivar group, Group epithets must conform t ...

Notes

External links

Linnaeus.c18.net: Johann Amman correspondence with Carl Linnaeus
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Amman, Johannes 18th-century botanists from the Russian Empire Ukrainian botanists 1707 births 1741 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society Leiden University alumni People from Schaffhausen Botanists with author abbreviations 18th-century Swiss botanists