From the Dominican Republic, José de Jesús Jiménez was amongst the top clinicians in his country, practising medicine for some 50 years and observing and collecting examples of the local flora. He was also the national chess champion and taught himself a number of modern European and classical languages in order to study botany.

Born and raised in the small town of Guazumal, ten miles outside of Santiago de los Caballeros, he was extremely hard working and as the eldest son he helped to support his family, travelling to Santiago by mule every day in order to study English, French and Mathematics. He later began to teach these subjects in order to pay his way through university and at this time met his wife. Training as a medic Jiménez worked as an intern in the hospital San Rafael (1926-1931) and at the private clinic of Don Arturo Grullón where he developed a love of botany. During the 1930s he owned a clinic and ran the laboratories at Don Grullón's establishment. The busy life of a doctor, however, did not detract from his studies and Jiménez kept a strict routine, practicing botany and learning Latin and Greek every morning between 5am and 7am before his clinic opened. Later he began to publish papers on medicinal topics and in 1950 he gained a doctorate with a thesis on polio-encephalitis.

In 1962 he was named chief of internal medicine at the Hospital José M. Cabral y Báez and was responsible for founding their cardiology ward. As a botanical taxonomist he worked at the University Santo Tomás de Aquino, travelling the country and collecting upwards of 11,000 specimens. His collections were primarily sent to the U.S. National Museum for study, resulting in the discovery of many new species, a lot of which bear his name. Jiménez also wrote numerous papers on the local plant life, including two major floras: A new catalogue of the Dominican Flora (1959) and Suplemento al catalogous Florae Domingensis del Prof. Rafael M. Moscoso (1968). A keen traveller he explored the length and breadth of the Americas as well as much of Europe and in recognition of his work was named 'Hijo Distinguido de Santiago' and awarded an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University 'Madre y Maestra'.

Sources:

J. de J. Jr Jiménez, 1981-1983, biographical MSS held at Natural History Museum, London.