Biography

Swiss physician from Arran who created a herbarium from Paraguay, Plantae Hasslerianae, between 1895 and 1937. Hassler divided his time between Geneva and Paraguay. In the decade before he became a plant hunter he made large ethnographic collections, about ten thousand objects in total, in Matto Grosso and Chaco. The collection was exhibited at the world's fairs in Paris and Chicago and is now kept at Museum der Kulturen at Basle and the Field Museum in Chicago. His herbarium at Geneva consists of more than more 13,000 numbers, or about 60,000 specimens, accounting for 90% of the flora of Paraguay.