Michael Joseph François Scheidweiler (1 August 1799 – 24 September 1861) was a German-born professor of botany and taxonomist, whose main area of interest was the Cactaceae.

[1] From a collection by Henri Guillaume Galeotti, he first described Ariocarpus retusus, type species of the genus in 1838 in Brussels.

He returned to Siegburg for a year before embarking on travels through much of Germany and Switzerland to acquire botanical knowledge, and then worked as a pharmacist and industrial chemist in Cologne and Aachen, where he married.

[3] In 1830 he settled in Belgium, first in Liège, later in Brussels, where he lectured on natural history at the Établissement Géographique de Bruxelles that Philippe Vandermaelen had established in 1830 and, from its foundation in 1836, at the State School of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture (now the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liège).

[4] In 1851 he was appointed instructor at the State School of Horticulture in Gentbrugge that Louis van Houtte had founded in 1849.