Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch

Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch

Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch (5 March 1771 - 14 November 1849) was a German physician and botanist from Kusel, a town in the Rhineland-Palatinate.

Koch studied medicine at the Universities of Jena and Marburg, and afterwards was a Stadtphysicus (state physician) in Trarbach and Kaiserslautern (1798). In 1824 he became a professor of medicine and botany at the University of Erlangen, where he remained for the rest of his life. At Erlangen he was also director of its Botanical Gardens. In 1833, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He best known written work was a treatise on German and Swiss flora titled Synopsis florae germanicae et helveticae (1835-37). Another noteworthy publication of his was Catalogus plantarum florae palatinae (Catalogue of Palatinate Flora) (1814).

The plant genus Kochia from the subfamily Chenopodioideae is named after him.

References

• This article is based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia.