Alexander Bunge

Alexander Bunge
Alexander Bunge. Lithograph by Eduard Hau
Born	6 October 1803 Kiev
Died	18 July 1890
Citizenship	Russian
Nationality	Russian German
Fields	Botany
Institutions	University of Dorpat

Alexander Georg von Bunge (Russian: Aleksandr Andreevich von Bunge, Алекса́ндр Андре́евич Бу́нге; 6 October [O.S. 24 September] 1803 – 18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1890) was a Russian German botanist. He is best remembered for scientific expeditions into Asia and especially Siberia.

Biography

Bunge was born as son of a family that belonged to the German minority in Tsarist Russia. His father Andreas Theodor was the son of Georg Friedrich Bunge, a pharmacist who had emigrated from East Prussia to Russia in the 18th century. He studied medicine at the University of Dorpat, later serving as a professor of botany in Kazan. In 1835, he returned to Dorpat, where he taught classes in botany until 1867. Here, he kept in contact with Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal, a botanist at the University of Halle, through correspondence, via articles published in the journal "Linnaea" and through the exchange of herbarium specimens. He remained in Dorpat until 1881, spending his later years there conducting investigations of Estonian flora.

In 1826 with Carl Friedrich von Ledebour and Carl Anton von Meyer, he embarked on an important scientific expedition to the Kirghiz Steppe and Altai Mountains. In 1830-31, he traveled to Beijing by way of Siberia, through which he conducted extensive research of Mongolian flora. Following his investigations in China, he returned to the Altai Mountains, where he conducted studies of the eastern part of the region (1832). In 1857-58 he took part in a scientific expedition to Khorasan and Afghanistan.

He was the father of physiologist Gustav von Bunge (1844-1920) and of Alexander von Bunge (1851–1930), an explorer and zoologist. His older brother, Friedrich Georg von Bunge (1802-1897), was a legal historian.

Commemoration

Taxa

• Genus Bungea (family Orobanchaceae, formerly a member of the family Scrophulariaceae).
• Pulsatilla bungeana from genus Pulsatilla
• Euonymus bungeanus from genus Euonymus
• Allium bungei from genus Allium
• Pinus bungeana from genus Pinus.
• Fraxinus bungeana from genus Fraxinus
• Clerodendrum bungei from genus Clerodendrum
• Catalpa bungei from genus Catalpa.
• Girgensohnia bungeana from genus Girgensohnia
• Iris bungei from genus Iris

Places

Bunge Land in the New Siberian Islands and a crater on Mars were named after him.

Selected writings

• Flora Altaica; scripsit Carolus Fridericus a Ledebour, adiutoribus Car. Ant. Meyer et Al. a Bunge. (1829-1833)
• Enumeratio plantarum quas in China boreali collegit Dr. Al. Bunge. Anno 1831. (1832)
• Plantarum mongolica-chinensium decas fine. (1835)
• Alexandri Lehmann reliquiae botanicae; sive, Enumeratio plantarum in itinere per deserta Asiae Mediae ab A. Lehmann annis 1839-1842 collectarum. Scripsit Al. Bunge. (1847)
• Beitrag zur kenntniss der flor Russlands und der steppen Central-Asiens, (1851) - Contribution to the knowledge of flora native to Russia and the steppes of Central Asia.
• Plantas Abichianas in itineribus per Caucasum regionesque Transcaucasicas collectas, enumeravit A. Bunge. (1858)
• Generis Astragali species gerontogeae. (1868-1869).
• Labiatae persicae, (1873).

See also

• List of Baltic German scientists