Christoph Carl Friedrich von Wurmb (2 July 1742 – March 1781) was a German

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

. His official shorthand is "Wurmb". He was a descendant of the noble family von Wurmb. At some point in time, his elder brother Ludwig and he himself fell in love with the same woman. After a long decision process, he decided to emigrate, and leave the woman to his brother. He joined the Dutch East India Company, and emigrated to Amsterdam, and later to Batavia, the modern-day

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...

. His brother later married this woman, Christiane von Werthern. His sister's brother in law,

Friedrich Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...

, wrote a short story about it, ''A magnanimous act'' (''Eine Grossmütige Handlung''). In biology, he is known for his taxonomy of palm trees. and for his writing about a

Bornean orangutan The Bornean orangutan (''Pongo pygmaeus'') is a species of orangutan endemic to the island of Borneo. Together with the Sumatran orangutan (''Pongo abelii'') and Tapanuli orangutan (''Pongo tapanuliensis''), it belongs to the only genus of great ...

.''Beschryving van de groote Borneoosche Orang Outang of de oost-indische Pongo''. In: ''Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Konsten en Weetenschappen'', Band 2, 1784,pp 245 ff.
Digitalisat
The genus '' Wurmbea'' in the family Colchicaceae is named after him.

References

1742 births 1781 deaths 18th-century German botanists Botanists with author abbreviations {{Germany-biologist-stub