Fryderyk Michał Szubert (18 April 1787 – 5 May 1860) was a Polish biologist and botanist who served as the first director of the Botanical Garden in Warsaw. He wrote extensively on the flora of Poland.

Life and work

Szubert (originally Schubert) was born in a German origin family at Ząbki near Warsaw to Bogumił who served in the court of Brühl and Joanna née Rudzka. Educated at the Warsaw Lyceum, he went to Paris in 1809 and attended the lectures of the botanists Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel and

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (; 12 April 1748 – 17 September 1836) was a French botanist, notable as the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today. His classification was based on an e ...

. He contributed to Mirbel's ''Éléments de physiologie végétale et de botanique'' (1815). Returning to Poland in 1813 he taught botany at the Lyceum and forestry at the School of Law and Administration. In 1816 he was appointed to the newly founded

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

as a professor of botany and worked there until the university was closed in 1831 following the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in W ...

. He was also in charge of the botanical garden of the palace from 1816 and in 1818 he founded a new botanical garden in the Royal Łazienki Park which he directed until 1846. He collected extensively for his herbarium while at the university and his students included

Jakub Ignacy Waga Jakub Ignacy Waga (26 July 1800 – 23 February 1872) was a Polish botanist, educator, and Piarist. Along with his brother Antoni Waga he published an early list of the plants of Poland. Life and work Waga was born at Grabow near Łomża to lan ...

and

Wojciech Jastrzębowski Wojciech Jastrzębowski (19 April 1799 – 30 December 1882) was a Polish scientist, naturalist and inventor, professor of botany, physics, zoology and horticulture at Instytut Rolniczo-Leśny in Marymont in Warsaw, and insurgent of the November ...

. He served in the artillery during the November Uprising of 1830–31. From 1836 he served as a professor of botany at the Warsaw School of Pharmacy. The tree initially named as '' Cupressus disticha'' and now known as '' Taxodium distichum'' was named ''Schubertia disticha'' in his honour but that genus name is now a synonym. Szubert married Józefa Zofia née Szwarc (d. 1878). A freemason, he was member of the Masonic lodge "Göttin von Eleusis" and honorary member of the "Temple of Minerva" lodge. He died in 1860 and was buried in Płock and the remains were moved in 1862 to the Warsaw Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szubert, Michal Polish botanists Naturalists from the Russian Empire 1787 births 1860 deaths