Georg Joseph Kamel
| Georg Joseph Kamel | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 April 1661 Brno, Moravia |
| Died | 2 May 1706 Philippines |
| Fields | botany |
Georg Joseph Kamel (21 April 1661, Brno, Moravia, now Czech Republic – 2 May 1706, Manila, Philippines), also known as Camellus, was a Jesuit missionary and botanist to the Philippines.[1] The genus Camellia was named in his honour by Carolus Linnaeus.
He was originally from Moravia. He became a Jesuit in 1682. He was sent first to the Marianas in 1683, then he transferred to the Philippines in 1688. Kamel established a pharmacy in Manila, the first in the Philippines, where poor people were supplied with remedies for free.
The results of his botanizing, largely of plants already established in the gardens of Chinese at Manila, many of which he sent to London, to the leading British botanist, Rev. John Ray and the apothecary-botanist James Petiver, was his Herbarium aliarumque stirpium in insula Luzone Philippinarum ("Herbs and Medicinal Plants in the island of Luzon, Philippines"). His first shipment of botanical drawings fell into the hands of pirates and was lost. Parts of this work on oriental plants were published as a96-page appendix in John Ray's third volume of Historia plantarum; species hactenus editas insuper multas noviter inventas & descriptas complectens (1703), and in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Petiver published a third section devoted to climbers.
Kamel was also interested in birds and wrote the first account of the birds of the Philippines, Observationes de Avibus Philippensibus published in 1702 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society[2]
UNESCO named the 300th anniversary of his death in 2006 among the important anniversaries of the world.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Reyes, Raquel A G (Oct. 2009). "Botany and zoology in the late seventeenth-century Philippines: the work of Georg Josef Camel SJ (1661-1706)". Arch Nat Hist (England) 36 (2): 262–76. ISSN 0260-9541. PMID 20014508.
- ^ Transactions, 23 (1702:1394-1399).
- ^ Brother Georg Josef Kamel, SJ
- ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do.
[edit] External links
- Biographical note in New Advent
- The Culture of Camellias: from the Phelps Memorial Collection of Garden Books
- Royal Society Full text of Observationes de Avibus Philippensibus
- Botanists with author abbreviations
- 17th-century Latin-language writers
- 17th-century Czech people
- 17th-century Austrian people
- Austrian Christian missionaries
- Austrian Jesuits
- Austrian priests
- Austrian scientists
- Botanists active in the Philippines
- Christian missionaries in the Philippines
- Czech botanists
- Czech ornithologists
- Czech Christian missionaries
- Czech Jesuits
- Czech priests
- Czech scientists
- Austrian people of Czech descent
- Expatriates in the Philippines
- Filipino pharmacists
- Herbalists
- Pharmacists
- Pre-Linnaean botanists
- Roman Catholic cleric–scientists
- People from Brno
- 1661 births
- 1706 deaths
