Lavater brothers

The Lavater brothers were Johann Heinrich Lavater (baptised 21 February 1611 – 9 June 1691) and Johann Jacob Lavater (1594–1636), both Swiss physicians and naturalists.

Biography

Johann Heinrich Lavater was a professor at the Carolinum, Zürich, here shown in front of the Grossmünster. Sepia drawing by Emil Schulhess, 1835

The brothers were the sons of Heinrich Lavater, also a physician, and a professor of physics and mathematics in Zürich.[1][2]

Johann Heinrich gained his doctorate in Basel in 1647,[3] and became a physician in Bern in 1653. In 1668 he prepared the Zürich Ordinance about plague.[4] He became professor of medicine and natural history at the Carolinum, Zürich.[1]

Little is known of Johann Jacob, except that he too was a physician and a naturalist.[1]

Legacy

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort named the genus Lavatera (tree mallows) in the Malvaceae in their honour in 1753.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Charters, M. "The Eponym Dictionary of Southern African Plants Plant Names L-O". Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  2. ^ Mörgeli, Christoph. "Lavater, Heinrich". Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (in German).
  3. ^ "Works of Lavater, Johann Heinrich" (in German). Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts (database). Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  4. ^ Lavater, Johann Heinrich (1668). Neue Pestordnung der Statt Zürich: samt einem kurzen Bericht, wie man sich mit Gottes hülffe vor diser Krankheit bewahren, und dieselbige heilen sölle (in German). Zürich.