Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller KCMG (1825–1896), botanist, trained in pharmacy and botany in his native Germany before emigrating to Adelaide in 1847. Immediately, he set about recording South Australian flora. Appointed inaugural government botanist in Melbourne in 1853, over the next few years he collected specimens of much of Victoria’s native vegetation, spending many months in previously-unexplored alpine country. As botanist to the North Australian Exploring Expedition in 1855, he travelled 8 000 km in 16 months, identifying some 800 new species and finding them their place in the universal classification system developed by Linnaeus. In 1857 he was appointed director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, but their progress was slow and he was replaced in 1873. By that time, he had been appointed a baron by the King of Württemberg; he was appointed KCMG in 1879. Seeing both the commercial potential of native forests, and the need to preserve them, in the late 1870s he prepared a report on the resources of Western Australia, advocating the establishment of a forest administration. Von Mueller was responsible for the introduction of the blue gum into the south of Europe, North and South Africa and California. He encouraged the commercial production of eucalyptus oil by Joseph Bosisto, who became a lifelong friend; Bosisto’s eucalyptus oil was being exported to England by 1865 and is still stocked in Australian supermarkets. He wrote more than 800 papers on Australian botany; his substantial works include Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae (1858–1882) and Eucalyptographia (1879–1884). He was a fellow of the Royal Geographical, Linnaean and Royal Societies and was awarded a Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1888.
