German-Russian botanist, explorer and director of the Imperial Botanic Garden in St. Petersburg. Born to German parents in Vitebsk (now in Belarus) Carl Anton von Meyer studied at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu in Estonia) under Professor C.F. Ledebour in 1813 and 1814. The pair journeyed to the Crimea together in 1818 and later he visited the Baltic region between 1821 and 1824. In 1826 Meyer, Ledebour and A. von Bunge undertook a great expedition together to the Russian Altai Mountains, the Kirghiz steppe (Kazakhstan) and finally reaching Barnaul. Funded by the university, the plants collected on this trip amounted to 1,600 phanerogamic specimens and formed the basis of the Flora Altaica published by the trio in four volumes between 1829 and 1833. In 1829 he was once again collecting in the Caucasus for the Russian Empire, exploring the Mt. Elbruz region with M. Kupfler he gathered some 200 specimens and published the accompanying report the following year.

Meyer was soon invited to work as a botanist for the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (1835) where he began to work closely with F.E.L. Fischer; publishing various botanical papers and later taking over from him as director of the Imperial Botanic Garden (1850). In 1844 he had also succeeded C.B. Trinius as director of the Academy of Sciences' Botanical Museum and was the only botanist to have held both positions. Meyer headed the garden and museum simultaneously until his death. During his life Meyer made many other important taxonomic and floristic contributions, including works on the Cruciferae and Polygonaceae and floras for Vyatka and Tambov regions.

Sources:
Anon, 1855, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 2: 422-423
S.G. Shetler, 1967, The Komarov Botanical Institute.