Johann Amman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJohann Amman
Swiss-Russian botanist
Date of Birth: 22-Dec-1707
Place of Birth: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Date of Death: 04-Dec-1741
Profession: botanist
Nationality: Switzerland
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn 
About Johann Amman
- Johann Amman, Johannes Amman or ?????? ????? (22 December 1707 in Schaffhausen – 14 December 1741 in St Petersburg), was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the Royal Society and professor of botany at the Russian Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg.
- 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 and Ruthenia (now Ukraine).
- 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.Amman was a student of Herman Boerhaave at Leyden from where he graduated as a physician in 1729.
- He came from Schaffhausen in Switzerland in 1729 to help Hans Sloane curate his natural history collection.
- Sloane was founder of the Chelsea Physic Garden and originator of the British Museum.
- Amman went on to St Petersburg at the invitation of Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755) and became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, regularly sending interesting plants, such as Gypsophila paniculata, back to Sloane.
- Linnaeus maintained a lively correspondence with Amman between 1736 and 1740.Amman founded the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences on Vasilyevsky Island in St Petersburg in 1735.
- In 1739 he married Elisabetha Schumacher, daughter of Johann Daniel Schumacher, the court librarian in St Petersburg.Ammannia of the Lythraceae 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 and who published work on Materia medica in 1675.
- Johann Amman is denoted by the author abbreviation Amman when citing a botanical name.
Read more at Wikipedia