Georg Christian Oeder

Georg Christian Edler von Oldenburg Oeder (3 February 1728 – 28 January 1791) was a German-Danish botanist, medical doctor, economist and social reformer.

The autonomous – and conservative - University of Copenhagen, reluctant as it was to employ foreign experts, resisted Oeder's appointment in an ordinary chair.

From 1753 he led the publication of a monumental botanical plate work, Flora Danica, which at first was planned to cover all plants, including bryophytes, lichens and fungi native to crown lands of the Danish king – Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenburg-Delmenhorst and Norway – with its North Atlantic dependencies Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.

English and American literature was obtained from Philip Miller of Chelsea Physic Garden and as many as 1327 volumes were bought from the estate of Richard Mead in 1754.

[6][7] With the fall of Johann Friedrich Struensee in 1771 and the consequent crisis in state finances and the strengthening of anti-enlightenment and anti-German conservative circles, Oeder lost his professorship.