Peter Thonning

(1775 - 1848)

Medical doctor and botanist. Sent to the Gold Coast (present time Ghana) by the Danish government 1799-1803 to investigate the useful plants of the colony. Later Danish civil servant. Thonning's own herbarium was destroyed during the British bombing of Copenhagen in 1807, but duplicates of Thonning's herbarium specimens plants and manuscripts in the posession og C.F. Schumacher were saved, and c. 1050 specimens are now at the Botanical Museum (C). See F.N. Hepper, The West African Herbaria of Isert and Thonning. A taxonomic revision and index to the IDC Microfiche. RBG, Kew. 1976.

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Last updated 3 March 1997