Background
Hoffmannsegg was born at Rammenau and studied at Leipzig and Göttingen.
Botanist entomologist ornithologist Zoologist
Hoffmannsegg was born at Rammenau and studied at Leipzig and Göttingen.
He travelled through Europe acquiring vast collections of plants and animals. He visited Hungary, Austria and Italy in 1795–1796 and Portugal from 1797 to 1801. He sent his collections to Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger, then in Brunswick, so that he could study them.
Hoffmannsegg proposed Illiger for the position of curator, and all the Hoffmannsegg"s collections were then transferred to Berlin.
The legume genus Hoffmannseggia is named for him.
Hoffmannsegg worked in Berlin from 1804 to 1816, and was elected a member of the Academy of Science of the city in 1815.