Leonart Fuchs: One of the Fathers of Botany

Fuchsia Plant named after Leonart Fuchs

Leonart Fuchs (1501-1566) is considered one of the three founding fathers of Botany along with Otto Brunfels and Hieronymus Bock. He was born in Germany in the Duchy of Bavaria and was professor of medicine at Tubingen University from 1535 until his death. Though trained as a physician, he was especially interested in the medicinal properties of plants.

In 1542, Fuchs published History of Plants which was illustrated with woodcuts and praised for its adherence to scholarship. The manual is one of the early books on plants and helped promote the science of natural history. He was the first scientist to describe fuchsia and so the plant was named after him. Later the color of this genus, bluish red, was also called fuchsia.
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