Sweden
Peter Forsskål
Uppsala University, 752 36 Uppsala, Sweden
Peter enrolled at Uppsala University at a young age in 1742, but returned home for some time and, after studies on his own, rematriculated in Uppsala in 1751, where he completed a theological degree.
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Peter travelled to the University of Göttingen in 1753. He studied Oriental languages and Philosophy and completed a doctorate there with a dissertation entitled Dubia de principiis philosophiae recentioris in 1756.
Uppsala University, 752 36 Uppsala, Sweden
Peter enrolled at Uppsala University at a young age in 1742, but returned home for some time and, after studies on his own, rematriculated in Uppsala in 1751, where he completed a theological degree.
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Peter travelled to the University of Göttingen in 1753. He studied Oriental languages and Philosophy and completed a doctorate there with a dissertation entitled Dubia de principiis philosophiae recentioris in 1756.
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1775
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naturalist Orientalist scientist
Peter Forsskål was born on January 11, 1732, in Helsinki in the family of the Helsinki vicar Juhan Forsskål. The Forsskal family was from the Finnish province of Savo. When Peter was ten, the family moved to Sweden - first to Uppland, then to Stockholm.
Peter enrolled at Uppsala University at a young age in 1742, but returned home for some time and, after studies on his own, rematriculated in Uppsala in 1751, where he completed a theological degree. Peter travelled to the University of Göttingen in 1753. He studied Oriental languages and Philosophy and completed a doctorate there with a dissertation entitled Dubia de principiis philosophiae recentioris in 1756.
The combination of knowledge of Arabic and botany made Forsskål unusually suited for the scientific expedition that led to both his fame and his death. In Denmark, under the sponsorship of King Frederick V, a major research voyage to Arabia was planned. Its large scientific staff was to include a naturalist, an astronomer, a philologist, a physician, and an artist. Forsskål was accepted as a member of the expedition, received the title of professor, and moved to Copenhagen in 1760. In January 1761 the expedition departed. Traveling via Marseilles, Malta, and Constantinople, it reached Egypt that autumn. In October 1762 the voyage continued toward southern Arabia, where Forsskål worked to complete his collections until his death from malaria in July 1763.
Forsskål’s contribution to botany consists of a single work: the Flora aegyptiaco-arabica, which was saved for posterity by the only surviving member of the expedition, Carsten Niebuhr, and was published at Copenhagen in 1775. This work is of importance both for the greatly increased knowledge it provided about the vegetation in the areas visited and for the valuable and original morphological observations that are often found in the descriptions of the species. But today Forsskål’s fame is based mainly upon the introduction to the Flora, in which he surveys the phytogeography of Egypt. By comparing the Scandinavian and the Egyptian flora he gave a precise characterization of Egyptian vegetation and clarified its relation to climate and soil. In this respect he can be seen as an often unfairly neglected precursor of Alexander von Humboldt.
