Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Schimper in Amharic sources known as Sambar[note 1] (2 August 1804 – October 1878) was a German botanist and naturalist who spent more than forty years in Ethiopia collecting specimens of plants, mainly in Semien, the Tekeze area and around Adwa.
[2] From 1828 to 1830 Schimper studied natural history in Munich and entered into contact with Eduard Rüppell,[1] and for a short period of time worked with geologist Louis Agassiz as a draftsman and illustrator.
For a period of time he was governor of Enticho, a district in Tigray, under the rule of Dejazmach Wube Haile Maryam, who had him marry Mirritsit, a woman from a prominent family in Adwa, who bore him several children.
While in Ethiopia, he maintained correspondence with botanists in Europe, and made valuable contributions to natural history collections in Paris and Berlin.
[9] During the years 1864 to 1868 he wrote an extensive report on his observations made in the course of his botanical trips through Tigray in northern Ethiopia.