Biography

German-born physician and botanist. Paul Hermann served as director of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden for 15 years as well as being the Chair of Botany at the University of Leiden. He was born in Halle, where his father was a well known organist. His mother was the daughter of a clergyman. Hermann enrolled to study medicine at the renowned school in Padua, Italy, after which he was recruited by the Dutch East India Company. He thus sailed to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as a medical officer in 1672 and took the opportunity to make collections of flora and fauna on the island. These would be some of the earliest scientific collections of plant specimens from Sri Lanka. They come mostly from the area around Colombo and include a number of foreign introductions, but nevertheless are of great significance.

Leaving the service of the Dutch East India Company in 1677 (with the rank of Chief Medical Officer), Hermann accepted his position at the Leiden botanic garden, which he endeavoured to make one of the finest such gardens in the world. He also took up the Chair of Botany at the University of Leiden in 1679.

Hermann compiled a list and descriptions of the plants at the Leiden University botanical garden under the title Paradisus batavia. It was edited by William Sherard and published three years after Hermann's death (Sherard had studied with Hermann under Tournefort in Paris). Sherard also published a catalogue of Hermann's Ceylon collections, Musaeum Zeylandicum (1717, second edition 1726), based on notes made by Hermann. Hermann's collections from Ceylon were also used by Linnaeus in producing his Flora Zeylanica (1747) and his Species Plantarum (1753).

Hermann's collections were eventually purchased by Joseph Banks and are now kept as part of the Sloane herbarium at the Natural History Museum in London. There is also Sri Lankan material at the Rijksherbarium in Leiden and further Hermann collections at Erfurt and the Institut de France. He collected some plants on the South African Cape, too, which can be found in the Sloane Herbarium and at Oxford.

Sources:
A. Lourteig, 1966, "L'herbier de Paul Hermann, base du Thesaurus zeylanicus de Johan Burman", Taxon, 15(1): 23-32
E. Peiris, 1952, Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2(1): 1-20
H. Trimen, 1888, "Hermann's Ceylon Herbarium and Linnaeus's 'Flora Zeylanica'", Journal of the Linnean Society. Botany, 24:129-155
Natural History Museum, The Hermann Herbarium: About Paul Hermann:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/hermann-herbarium/abouthermann.htm, accessed 9 February 2011.