Biography

German-Australian botanist who initiated the National Herbarium of Victoria in Melbourne. Ferdinand von Mueller was one of the leading lights of early Australian botany and directed the Botanic Gardens at Melbourne for 15 years. A prolific plant collector and employer of collectors, he published numerous descriptions of new plant taxa and contributed many articles to scientific journals on botany and other subjects, including geography, pharmacy and agriculture. His prodigious correspondence with European scientists established his international reputation, but he lost out on authoring a flora of Australia to George Bentham, who was able to access historical specimens and their descriptions held at Kew. Highly respected in Europe, not least for his generosity in sharing his specimens, he held 20 knighthoods, five doctorates and membership of some 150 scientific societies.

Ferdinand von Müller was born in Rostock, northern Germany (he later anglicised his surname to Mueller). His father died of tuberculosis when the young Mueller was only ten years old and the family moved to Tönning, further to the west. Here he developed his love of nature, roaming the north-west coast and fields. Beginning an apprenticeship as an apothecary after his mother died in 1840, he then moved to the nearby town of Husum. As part of his apprenticeship Mueller was required to generate a herbarium, a task he took to with such relish that he was able to complete his first botanical work, Husums Phanerogamische Flora, in 1843. He later produced a flora of the whole state. He went on to graduate in pharmacy from the University of Kiel and was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on the flora of south-west Schleswig when he was 21. At this time his older sister, Iwanne, died of tuberculosis, and one of his two younger sisters began to show signs of the disease. This, together with the fact that he suffered delicate health himself, prompted the decision for Mueller and his two remaining sisters, Bertha and Clara, to emigrate to the warmer climes of Australia, on the recommendation of a family friend, Dr. Ludwig Preiss.

Arriving in Adelaide, Mueller immediately began work in a chemist's shop and zealously started to make collections of the local flora. At this time he anglicised his name and in 1849 became a British subject in South Australia. The early 1850s saw Mueller make trips farther afield to collect, and the first of his articles on the South Australian flora appeared in journals. In 1852 he sent a paper to the Linnean Society in London on the flora of South Australia, for example, and in 1853 both a German journal and Hooker's Journal of Botany & Kew Miscellany featured his piece "Flora of South Australia displayed in its fundamental features". In 1852 he left his sisters behind and joined friends moving to Victoria, though he did not share their plans to dig for gold. Instead, settling in Melbourne, he made the acquaintance of the Governor, C.J. La Trobe, who pounced upon Mueller's skills by appointing him the first Government Botanist of the Colony of Victoria in February 1853. He remained in this position until his death, as well as leading the Melbourne Botanic Gardens from 1857-1873.

Mueller never married but was dedicated to his botanical work, travelling far and wide searching for specimens and producing thousands of pages of botanical literature and correspondence. His early expeditions focussed on the Australian Alps, where he travelled with the botanic garden superintendent, John Dallachy, in 1853. He found the striking shrub Grevillea victoriae F.Muell. on this trip, which he named after Queen Victoria, and Acacia dallachiana F.Muell. He made two more fruitful trips to the Alps in 1853-1855, discovering the small white Ranunculus millani F.Muell. among more than a hundred more new species. He named this alpine plant after his host at Gippsland, the explorer Angus McMillan. Scaling two mountains he believed to be as yet undiscovered, Mueller named them Mount Hotham and Mount Latrobe, but they are now known as Mount Loch and Mount Feathertop, respectively, owing to later surveyors' difficulty in reconciling Mueller's compass readings, which may have suffered interference from the basalt cap of Mt. Loch. In 1855 he joined the North West Australia Expedition, though with trepidation because of the hostile nature of the area's Aboriginal population and the arid climate. He was rewarded with 8 species new to Australia.

In 1859 Mueller became president of the Royal Society of Victoria, which succeeded the former Philosophical Institute. Active in the society's Exploration Committee, he helped to set up the Burke and Wills expedition of 1860 (the first to cross the country) and as well as continuing his prolific writings, planned more collecting adventures for himself. In 1867 he visited Western Australia, choosing to explore the area around King George Sound, taking in Albany, the Porongorups and the Stirling Range, whose highest peaks he climbed. A decade later, commissioned by the government of Western Australia, he returned to the region to discover its northern landscapes, travelling overland as far as the Greenough River, then beyond Northampton to the Murchison River and across the barren plains to Shark Bay and Freycinet Harbour. Returning to Swan River, he also visited other parts of the south coast up to the Shannon River. Although he did not discover a great number of new taxa in Western Australia, Mueller was moved by the peculiar beauty of the area's flora. In particular, he was entranced by the myrtaceous Verticordia oculata Meisn., which he dubbed 'the princess of the Australian flora'.

Because of his lack of counterparts in Australia, Mueller was forced to be independent in many ways, though he relied very much on correspondence with Kew in England to verify his work. In his later life, however, he employed others to collect for him and began to publish with other botanists in Australia, such as J.H. Maiden. Among his major publications were the 12-volume Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae (1858-1882), Eucalyptographia (1879-1884) and The Iconography of Australian Species of Acacia and Cognate Genera (1887-1888). His 1879 Report on the Forest Resources of Western Australia, meanwhile, was one of the first to deal with the practical value of the country's trees. He also helped George Bentham with Flora Australiensis, in particular the section on Eucalyptus; his own dreams to publish such a flora dashed by his not returning to Europe to consult herbarium collections there. Correspondence with William Hooker indicates that he made plans to go to Europe in the late 1850s, but decided not to go for fear of being stripped of his government position in his absence from Melbourne.

Mueller's lone nature came to the fore when indeed he was ousted from his position at the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. The decision was seemingly made because of his focus on science at the expense of making the gardens appealing to the general public. A Royal Commission on the gardens in 1871 saw Mueller replaced within two years by William Guilfoyle, though he retained his position as Government Botanist. While devastated at this turn of events, he was yet to enjoy myriad honours in the next two decades. He had already been appointed a baron in his native Germany in 1871 and was made CMG in 1868, followed by KCMG in 1879. A Fellow of the Linnean Society and of the Royal Society, he received the latter's Royal Medal in 1888, and in 1890 was elected president of the new Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science.

As well as his exploration, plant collecting and publishing achievements, Mueller may claim credit for introducing many economic plants to Australia, as well as sending eucalyptus to other countries. For example, plantations of Eucalyptus globulus at the Pontine marshes near Rome, established from 1870, made the inhospitable area habitable, and earned him a papal knighthood. A Lutheran Christian who believed in the immutability of species, Mueller was a correspondent of Charles Darwin but found the idea of evolution impossible to stomach. His views on this matter do not seem to have done much damage to his reputation as one of the foremost botanists in Australian history. The genus Muellerina Tieghem (Loranthaceae) is named after him, as is the journal of the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens, Muelleria, and numerous place names in his adopted country.

Sources:
J. Britten, 1897, Journal of Botany, 35: 272-273
L. Diels (translated by D.J. Carr), in D.J. Carr and S.G.M. Carr (eds), 1981, People and Plants in Australia: 62-65
L. Gillbank, 1992, "Alpine Botanical Expeditions of Ferdinand Mueller", Meulleria, 7(4): 473-489
N. Hall, 1978, Botanists of the Eucalypts: 97-98
E. Kynaston, 1981, A man on the edge: a life of Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller
J.H. Maiden, 1902, Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S.W., 42: 77-82
W.B. Spencer, 1896, "Baron von Mueller", Victorian Naturalist, 13(7): 87-92
J.B. Webb, 2003, The Botanical Endeavour: Journey Towards a Flora of Australia: 235-257.