The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a physician and pupil of Linnaeus, carried out his most important work in South Africa and Japan. Having studied in Amsterdam and Leiden, he was asked to go plant-hunting in areas where the Dutch East India Company's trading activities were opening up territory for scientific exploration. In 1771 he travelled to South Africa as a ship's doctor, spending three years searching for, classifying and propagating plants, while at the same time becoming fluent in Dutch, as only the Dutch were allowed to enter Japan, his ultimate destination....
The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a physician and pupil of Linnaeus, carried out his most important work in South Africa and Japan...
