Johann Centurius Hoffmann Graf von Hoffmannsegg (23 August 1766 – 13 December 1849) was a German botanist, entomologist and ornithologist. Hoffmannsegg was born at Rammenau and studied at

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

and

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

. He travelled through Europe acquiring vast collections of

plants Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude ...

and

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...

s. He visited

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

and

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

in 1795–1796 and

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

from 1797 to 1801. He sent his collections to

Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger (19 November 1775 – 10 May 1813) was a German entomologist and zoologist. Illiger was the son of a merchant in Braunschweig. He studied under the entomologist Johann Hellwig, and later worked on the zoological colle ...

, then in Brunswick, so that he could study them. Hoffmannsegg worked in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

from 1804 to 1816, and was elected a member of the Academy of Science of the city in 1815. He was the founder of the zoological museum of Berlin in 1809. Hoffmannsegg proposed Illiger for the position of

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

, and all the Hoffmannsegg's collections were then transferred to

. The legume genus '' Hoffmannseggia'' is named for him.CalFlora Botanical Names
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Notes

References

1766 births 1849 deaths People from Bautzen (district) People from the Electorate of Saxony German entomologists 18th-century German botanists German ornithologists Pteridologists Botanists with author abbreviations Botanical illustrators 19th-century German botanists {{Germany-botanist-stub