Georg Eberhard Rumphius

Georg Eberhard Rumphius (originally: Rumpf; baptized c. 1 November 1627 – 15 June 1702) was a German-born botanist employed by the Dutch East India Company in what is now eastern Indonesia, and is best known for his work Herbarium Amboinense produced in the face of severe personal tragedies, including the death of his wife and a daughter in an earthquake, going blind from glaucoma, loss of his library and manuscripts in major fire, and losing early copies of his book when the ship carrying it was sunk.

He was recruited by the West India Company, ostensibly to serve the Republic of Venice, but was put on a ship "De Swarte Raef" (The Black Raven) in 1646 bound for Brazil where the Dutch and Portuguese were fighting over territory.

By 1657 his official title was "engineer and ensign", at which point he requested a transfer to the civilian branch of the company and became second merchant ("onderkoopman") on Hitu island, north of Ambon.

In 1666 he was appointed as "secunde" at Ambon directly under Joan Maetsuycker, the governor-general in Batavia, who would later give him dispensation from his ordinary duties to complete this study.

[2] Rumphius is best known for his authorship of Het Amboinsche kruidboek or Herbarium Amboinense, a catalogue of the plants of the island of Amboina (in modern-day Indonesia), published posthumously in 1741.

Rumphius provided illustrations and descriptions for nomenclature types for 350 plants, and his material contributed to the later development of the binomial scientific classification by Linnaeus.

[4] Despite the distance, he was in communication with scientists in Europe, was a member of a scientific society in Vienna, and even sent a collection of Moluccan sea shells to the Medicis in Tuscany.

On 11 January 1687, with the project nearing completion, a great fire in the town destroyed his library, numerous manuscripts, original illustrations for his Herbarium Amboinense, volumes of the Hortus Malabaricus, and works by Jacobus Bontius.

[1] Persevering, Rumphius and his helpers first completed the book in 1690, but the ship carrying the manuscript to the Netherlands was attacked and sunk by the French, forcing them to start over from a copy that had fortunately been retained thanks to Camphuys.

[2] The other major work D'Amboinsche Rariteitkamer ("Amboinese Cabinet of Curiosities"), a manuscript he had sent to Dr Hendrik D'Acquet of Delft in 1701 consisted mainly of plates of seashells and crabs.