Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel
Born	(1811-10-24)24 October 1811 Neuenhaus, present-day Germany
Died	23 January 1871(1871-01-23) (aged 59) Utrecht, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Scientific career
Fields	Botany
Author abbrev. (botany)	Miq.

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (24 October 1811, Neuenhaus – 23 January 1871, Utrecht) was a Dutch botanist, whose main focus of study was on the flora of the Dutch East Indies.

Life

Miquel studied medicine at the University of Groningen, where, in 1833, he recieved his doctorate. After starting work as a doctor at the Buitengasthuis Hospital in Amsterdam, in 1835, he taught medicine at the clinical school in Rotterdam. He was professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam (1846–1859) and Utrecht University (1859–1871). He directed the Rijksherbarium (National Herbarium) at Leiden from 1862. In 1866, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Although he never travelled far, he accumulated a large collection of flora of Australia and the Dutch East Indies through an extensive network of correspondents. He described many important families of Australian and Indonesian plants, including Casuarinaceae, Myrtaceae, Piperaceae and Polygonaceae. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Miq. when citing a botanical name.

Work

Miquel did research on the taxonomy of plants. He was interested in the flora of the Dutch colonies , he wrote a flora of the Dutch East Indies and Suriname . Although he never traveled far, he knew through correspondence a large collection of Australian submit. Dutch and Indian plants He described a number of important families like Casuarinaceae , Myrtaceae , Piperaceae and Polygonaceae . In total, he has published some 7,000 botanical names. Through its partnership with the German botanist Göppert he became interested in paleobotany , the study of fossil plants. The two published together on fossil Cycadospermen . Along with Samuel Jacob Gijsbert van Breda , Pieter Harting and Winand Staring he was in the first commission to create a geological map of the Netherlands, which was established in 1852 by Thorbecke .

Key Publications

• Genera Cactearum, Rotterdam, 1839
• Monographia Cycadearum, Utrecht, 1842
• Systema Piperacearum, Rotterdam,1843-1844
• Illustrationes Piperacearum, Bonn, 1847
• Cycadeae quaedam Americanae, partim novae. Amsterdam, 1851.
• Flora Indiae batavae, Amsterdam, 1855-1859
• Leerboek der Artensij-Gewassen, Utrecht, 1859
• De Palmis Archipelagi Indici observationes novae. Amsterdam, 1868.