Johannes Browallius (30 August 1707 – 25 July 1755), also called John Browall, was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

, botanist and at one time friend of Swedish taxonomist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...

Career

He was a Professor of Physics from 1737–46, Professor of Theology 1746–49 and was the Bishop of Turku, then a diocese of the

Church of Sweden The Church of Sweden ( sv, Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sw ...

, and Vice-Chancellor of

The Royal Academy of Turku The Royal Academy of Turku or the Royal Academy of Åbo ( sv, Kungliga Akademin i Åbo or ; la, Regia Academia Aboensis; fi, Turun akatemia) was the first university in Finland, and the only Finnish university that was founded when the country ...

from 1749 until his death in 1755. He was an elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1740.

Botanical activities

In 1735 seeds of a plant collected in

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

by Robert Millar were donated to

Philip Miller Philip Miller FRS (1691 – 18 December 1771) was an English botanist and gardener of Scottish descent. Miller was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden for nearly 50 years from 1722, and wrote the highly popular ''The Gardeners Dicti ...

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 sc ...

in London. The plants were grown on and forwarded to 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 ...

but with the name ''Dalea''. This plant was named ''

Browallia ''Browallia'' is a small genus of seven species of flowering plants (mostly annuals though occasionally shrubs or ephemerophytes) belonging to the nightshade family Solanaceae. Armando T. Hunziker: The Genera of Solanaceae. A.R.G. Gantner Ver ...

'' ('' Species Plantarum'' 2: 631. 1753 May 1753 ''

Genera Plantarum ''Genera Plantarum'' is a publication of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The first edition was issued in Leiden, 1737. The fifth edition served as a complementary volume to ''Species Plantarum'' (1753). Article 13 of the Internati ...

'' ed. 5, 1754) by the famous plant taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in honour of his fellow countryman and botanical colleague. Linnaeus’s principles of botanical nomenclature were first expounded in Fundamenta Botanica of 1736 and these were later elaborated, with numerous examples, in his '' Critica Botanica'' of 1737. The book was published in Germany when Linnaeus was 29 and the title page carries a discursus by Johannes Browall. The friendship was not to last. Coombes notes "''Browallia demissa'' (weak). Renamed by Linnaeus from ''B. elata'' (tall) after falling out with Browall." Browall had advised the young Linnaeus to finish his studies abroad, then marry a rich girl – even though he was already engaged to Sara Lisa Moraea.Stafleu, Frans A. 1971. ''Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: the Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789''. Utrecht: International Association for Plant Taxonomy. . Linnaeus did, indeed, spend the winter of 1737–1738 in Leiden, travelling on to France. While abroad, he was sent news that "his best friend B." had taken advantage of his absence to court Sara Lisa Moraea and had almost succeeded in persuading her that her fiance would never return to Sweden. However, the bishop’s suit failed; Sara Lisa and Linnaeus were married in 1739. The entry under ''Browallia grandiflora'' in ''Curtis’s Botanical Magazine'' of 1831 reports:

Publications

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Browallius, Johannes 1707 births 1755 deaths 18th-century Finnish physicists 18th-century Latin-language writers 18th-century male writers Finnish Lutheran theologians 18th-century Swedish physicists Botanists active in Europe 18th-century Finnish botanists 18th-century Swedish botanists Swedish taxonomists 18th-century Lutheran bishops Lutheran archbishops and bishops of Turku Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 18th-century Protestant theologians