Organorum in vegetabilibus exponatur ortus, explicatio et successio, tum aliorum ex aliis et in alia mutatio, quam metamorphosin sive prolapsin plantarum dicunt botanici
Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was a Dutch botanist. He was a Professor of Botany at the University of Utrecht and the director of the Rijksherbarium at Leiden from 1862.
Background
Ethnicity:
Miquel's father was of South-East fFrench origin. His mother was German.
Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was born on October 24, 1811, in Neuenhaus, Germany to the family of a country physician Anton Theodor Miquel and Luberta Kohler. His brothers were Franz Wilhelm Miquel, a German high school teacher, editor and writer, and Johannes von Miquel, a German Minister of State and Finance and a reformer.
Education
Miquel attended Gymnasium Georgianum in Lingen. He first studied literature but later since 1829 was trained in medicine at the University of Groningen receiving his doctorate in 1833.
Miquel first worked as a doctor at the Buitengasthuis hospital in Amsterdam and went to Rotterdam in 1835, where he taught pharmacology, botany and natural history as a lecturer at the local clinical school.
In 1846 Miquel became a professor of botany at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam. In 1859 he moved to Utrecht University, where he was not only a professor but also director of the Utrecht botanical gardens (then located at the Nieuwe Gracht, now the Oude Hortus). At the same time, from 1862 he was director of the Rijksherbarium (National Herbarium) in Leiden. As the director of the National Herbarium Miquel was not allowed to hold a collection himself, so he sold his collection at Utrecht University when he was appointed. This collection is included in the collections of the National Herbarium of the Netherlands. In 1870-1871 he officiated as a Rector of the university.
Miquel's numerous (296 items in his bibliography) botanical publications deal mainly with the floras of the former Netherlands East Indies, Surinam, and Japan, and with the Cycadaceae, Moraceae, and Piperaceae. He collaborated with Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius on the Flora brasiliensis; was the first to publish a comprehensive flora of the Netherlands East Indies; and played an important background role in the development of the East Indian quinine industry.
Miquel's early floristic beginnings had not really lasted long; towards the end of his Rotterdam years, he was an all-round taxonomist seeking to integrate findings in anatomy, morphology, physiology, lifecycles and descriptive taxonomy.
Membership
Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Linnean Society of London.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
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Sweden
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
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Germany
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
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Netherlands
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
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Germany
Linnean Society of London
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United Kingdom
Personality
By going to Groningen in 1829, Miquel turned Dutch: in his later years, he spoke Dutch without an accent, considered himself a Dutchman and was fully accepted as such by society and government. Miquel's main strength derived from his enthusiastic and open approach to a great variety of botanical problems; his main weakness was that with his astonishing productivity he sometimes tended towards superficiality: there was so much to do and to enjoy in botany.
Connections
Miquel married Catharina Elisabeth Madrij on March 25, 1841, the eldest daughter of the Rotterdam banker Pieter Simon Madrij. They had seven known children: Helene, Bertha Amalia, Catharina Elisabeth, Anton Theodor, Pieter Simon, Betsij, and Frederica Antonia Wilhelmina.