Jens Peter Jacobsen (7 April 1847 - 30 April 1885) was a Danish novelist, poet, and scientist, in Denmark often just written as "J. P. Jacobsen" (and pronounced "I. P. Jacobsen"). He began the naturalist movement in Danish literature and was a part of the Modern Breakthrough. Jacobsen was born in Thisted in Jutland, the eldest of the five children of a prosperous merchant. He went to school in Copenhagen and was a student at the University of Copenhagen in 1868. As a boy, he showed a remarkable talent for science, in particular botany. In 1870, although he was already secretly writing poetry,