Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer (1 January 1791 – 7 August 1858) was a German botanist and botanical historian. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, he lectured in Göttingen and in 1826 became a professor of botany at the University of Königsberg, as well as Director of the Botanical Garden. His botanical specialty was the Juncaceae – a family of rushes. His major work was the four-volume Geschichte der Botanik ("History of Botany", 1854–57).Department of Systematic Botany, Albrecht von Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Georg August University Göttingen, Index Collectorum . His history covered ancient authorities such as Aristotle and Theophrastus, explored the beginnings of modern botany in the context of 15th- and 16th-century intellectual practice, and offered a wealth of biographical data on early modern botanists.Julius Sachs, History of Botany (1530–1860), translated by Henry E. F. Garnsey, revised by Isaac Bayley Balfour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), pp. 13, 17, 20–32, 376–377. Julius von Sachs pronounced him "no great botanist" but admitted that he "possessed a clever and cultivated intellect."Julius Sachs, History of Botany (1530–1860) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), p. 161.
He died in Königsberg, East Prussia.
In 1828, he was honoured by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who named a genus of plants from tropical South America after him, Ernestia.
This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation E.Mey. when citing a botanical name.
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