Biography

German (Silesian) medic and botanist, director of the Moscow Physic Garden. Baptised in Zodel in 1710 Traugott Gerber grew up in this village. Educated at the University of Leipzig he studied both medicine and botany and in 1735 received his doctorate with a thesis entitled De thoracibus. The same year the directorship of the physic garden in Moscow was to be made a separate post, one which Gerber was called to fulfil and he enriched the garden's collections with specimens from Germany, France, the Netherlands, China, and all over Russia. He began to study the vegetation in the vicinity of Moscow and in 1736 published the description of some 200 native plants.

Undertaking extensive field trips in 1739 and 1741 he journeyed to the Volga River (Samara, Ulyanovsk and Volgograd), the Don River, the Black Sea and to the Chinese border, gathering data on the plants grown in these regions for medicinal purposes. From these travels Gerber was responsible for writing three regional floras, that of Moscow (Flora mosquensis), the Volga River (Flora volgensis) and the Don River (Flora tanaecensis). Later he was called to lecture in anatomy at the Medical Institute as well as to work as a surgeon, but in 1742 the position of director of the garden was abolished and he left Russian service.

Gerber left Moscow for Vyborg, taking with him his herbarium of 2,400 different taxa, although it was unfortunately lost soon after he died. However, 60 or so specimens of his can still be found in the herbarium of the University of Moscow. The genus Gerbera was named after him by Frederic Gronovius, despite the fact that it is found in Africa.

Sources:
W.J. Bryce, 2008, A Botanist's Paradise: The Establishment of Scientific Botany in Russia in the Eighteenth Century
Traugott Gerber, Gerbera.org:
http://www.gerbera.org/persons-of-interest/traugott-gerber/, accessed 24 November 2010.