Biography

Dutch botanist and physician. Johannes Burman was a friend of Carl Linnaeus and a powerful proponent of the Swedish botanist's ideas. Thanks to links with botanists and collectors in other parts of the world, particularly in the East Indies, Burman was able to bring together a significant world herbarium. He was also known as an editor of Rumphius' Herbarium amboinense.

Burman studied medicine in Leiden, qualifying in 1728 as a doctor of medicine. He set up practice in Amsterdam but maintained a keen interest in botany, in which he had been instructed by Herman Boerhaave in Leiden. On the death of Frederik Ruysch in 1731, Burman was appointed Professor of Botany at the Amsterdam Hortus Medicus and was put in charge of the city's botanic garden. He was later professor at the Amsterdam Athenaeum (1755-1777).

While travelling through the Netherlands in 1735, Carl Linnaeus visited Burman, who invited him to stay at his home. The pair worked together for six weeks on Burman's flora of Ceylon, Thesaurus zeylanicus (1737). Linnaeus later named the genus Burmannia L. in honour of his Dutch friend.

The publishing of Rumphius' Herbarium Amboinense (1741-1755) was a joint effort by Burman, Linnaeus and Adriaan van Royen, with Burman supplying Latin translations of the Dutch text. The magnum opus comprises treatments of some 1,200 species of Indonesian plants. Burman was also responsible for the completion of work begun by Charles Plumier, a missionary who visited Martinique and Haiti in 1689 and produced 6,000 drawings of plants found there. Burman published these after Plumier's death, with descriptions in Plantarum Americanarum (1755-1760). He also published Rariorum Africanarum plantarum (1738-1739) and his Flora Malabarica (following that of Caspar Commelin) appeared in 1768.

Burman was married to Adriana van Buuren. Their son Nicolaas Laurens Burman followed his father into botanical research, studying for some time in Uppsala under his father's correspondent, Carl Linnaeus. Nicolaas further built upon the significant herbarium of his father, contacting yet more collectors.

The Burmans' herbarium came to include collections made by Paul Hermann (from South Africa and Sri Lanka), F.A. Prayan and Christian Kleynhoff (India), H.B. 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
M. Kimberley, 1977, "Johannes Burman, 1707-1779", Excelsa, 7: 28-30
A. Lasègue, 1845, Musée botanique de M. Benjamin Delessert: 65-67
A. Lourteig, 1966, " L'herbier de Paul Hermann, base du Thesaurus zeylanicus de Johan Burman", Taxon, 15: 23-33.