KARL

PETER

See also:

• KARL PETER THUNBERG (1743-1828)

THUNBERG (1743-1828)  , Swedish naturalist, was born at Jonkoping on the 11th of November 1743, and became a pupil of Linnaeus at the university of Upsala . After graduating in medicine there in 1770 he obtained an appointment as surgeon in the Dutch East India Company, and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope in 1772 . He spent three years there, and then went to Japan, where he remained till 1778, engaged in making collections of plants . On his return in 1779 he visited England, and made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks . In 1781 he was appointed demonstrator of botany at Upsala, and he succeeded the younger Linnaeus as professor of botany in 1784 . He published his Flora japonica in 1784, and in 1788 he began to publish his travels . He completed his Prodomus plantarum in 1800, his Icones plantarum japonicarum in 1805, and his Flora capensis in 1813 . He published numerous memoirs in the transactions of many Swedish and other scientific societies, of sixty-six of which he was an honorary member . He died near Upsala on the 8th of August 1828 . A genus of tropical plants (Thunbergia), of the natural order Acanthaceae, which are cultivated as evergreen climbers, is named after him .