Wilhelm Sulpiz Kurz (5 May 1834 – 15 January 1878) was a German botanist and garden director in

Bogor, West Java Bogor ( su, , nl, Buitenzorg) is a Cities of Indonesia, city in the West Java Provinces of Indonesia, province, Indonesia. Located around south of the national capital of Jakarta, Bogor is the 6th largest city in the Jakarta metropolitan area ...

and

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. He worked in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Kurz when citing a

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 Group epithets must conform to the ''Intern ...

Life

He was born in Augsburg near

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, and was a pupil of

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius Carl Friedrich Philipp (Karl Friedrich Philipp) von Martius (17 April 1794 – 13 December 1868) was a German botanist and explorer. Life Martius was born at Erlangen, the son of Prof Ernst Wilhelm Martius, court apothecary. He graduated PhD f ...

. He studied botany, mineralogy and chemistry at the University of Munich. Family misfortunes in 1854 led him to abandon studies and move to Holland where he worked as an apothecary. He then joined the Dutch Colonial Army medical service and sailed to

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

in September 1856. He moved to Banka in March 1857 and in 1859 he joined an expedition to Bori, Sulawesi (Celebes). In September of the same year, he joined the Botanic Garden at Buitenzoorg where he had access to a large library and worked with botanists. In 1864 he was induced by Thomas Anderson, who was visiting the Dutch colonies to examine cinchona cultivation, to return with him to

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

as curator of the herbarium, a post he held till his death, to the great advantage of Indian botany. In 1866 Kurz was sent to study the flora of the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...

. While in the South Andamans, he was attacked and tied up in the forest by convicts, leading to the abandonment of the project and his return to Calcutta. In 1867 he was asked to write botany texts for forest officers in British Burma which led him to travel and collect in the region. In November 1877 he left Calcutta for Penang but fell ill on reaching in December and died on 15 January 1878.

Works

Kurz's major work is his ''Forest Flora of British Burma'', Calcutta, 1877, 2 vols. He also wrote articles in the ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' and the '' Journal of Botany''.

References

;Attribution Botanists with author abbreviations 19th-century German botanists 1834 births 1878 deaths Botanists active in India German expatriates in India {{Germany-botanist-stub