Dutch botanist Nicolaas Burman, son of Johannes Burman, was Professor of Botany at the Amsterdam Athenaeum and head of the city's botanic garden from 1769-1793. Burman travelled to Uppsala in 1760 to study under Carl Linnaeus, who had become a friend of his father while in Holland 25 years earlier. Among Nicolaas Burman's published works are Specimen Botanicum de Geraniis (1759) and Flora Indica (1768) (completed by Johan Gerhard Koenig).

Together with his father, Nicolaas Burman gathered together a large herbarium of specimens sent to them by collectors around the world. The Burmans' herbarium came to include collections made by Paul Hermann (from South Africa and Sri Lanka), F. Prayan and Christian Kleynhoff (India), H. Oldenland (South Africa) and L. Garcin (Africa and Asia). Other collectors represented are C. Allioni, J. Breyne, A. Haller, M. Houttuyn, Adriaan van Royen and C.C. Schmidel. Specimens were shared with Linnaeus, Bernard de Jussieu and other contemporary botanists, while the main herbarium was later acquired by Benjamin Delessert (apart from the Thesaurus zeylanicum herbarium and the Linnean Lapland herbarium, both of which went to the Institut de France, Paris; Delessert's collections are now at Geneva). J.C.D. Schreber also acquired a significant number of the Burmans' Sri Lankan and South African plants, now housed at the state herbarium in Munich.

Sources:
A.H.G. Alston, 1957, "A Linnaean Herbarium in Paris", Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 168: 102-103
R. Desmond, 1992, The European discovery of the Indian flora
P.J. Florijn, 1987, "Biographical Notes about Four Plant Collectors in Asia Mentioned by N. L. Burman in His "Flora Indica (1768)"", Taxon, 36(1): 34-38
C. Jarvis, 2007, Order out of Chaos: 196
A. Lasègue, 1845, Musée botanique de M. Benjamin Delessert: 65-67
F. Stafleu, 1971, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: 169-170.