Lavater brothers

The Lavater brothers were Johann Heinrich Lavater (baptised 21 February 1611 – 9 June 1691) and Johann Jacob Lavater (1594–1636), both Swiss physicians and naturalists.

Biography
Johann Heinrich Lavater was a professor at the Carolinum, Zurich, here shown in front of the Grossmünster. Sepia drawing by Emil Schulhess, 1835

The brothers were the sons of Heinrich Lavater, also a physician, and a professor of physics and mathematics in Zurich.[1][2]

Johann Heinrich gained his doctorate in Basel in 1647,[3] and became a physician in Bern in 1653. In 1668 he prepared the Zurich Ordinance about plague.[4] He became professor of medicine and natural history at the Carolinum, Zurich.[1]

Little is known of Johann Jacob, except that he too was a physician and a naturalist.[1]

Legacy

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort named the genus Lavatera (tree mallows) in the Malvaceae in their honour in 1753.[1]

References
  1. Charters, M. "The Eponym Dictionary of Southern African Plants Plant Names L-O". Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  2. Mörgeli, Christoph. "Lavater, Heinrich". Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (in German).
  3. "Works of Lavater, Johann Heinrich" (in German). Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts (database). Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  4. Lavater, Johann Heinrich (1668). Neue Pestordnung der Statt Zürich: samt einem kurzen Bericht, wie man sich mit Gottes hülffe vor diser Krankheit bewahren, und dieselbige heilen sölle (in German). Zürich.
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