Peter Jonas Bergius (228)

Peter Jonas Bergius (6 July 1730–10 July 1790) was a physician and professor, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Erikstad Sweden, Bergius was orphaned by the age of seven; his father died when he was only seven weeks old, his mother when he was seven. Nevertheless, his father’s social standing helped Bergius receive a good education and he entered Lund University in 1746. His mentors, believing his stutter an impediment to any career in public speaking, encouraged the young Bergius to develop his interest in medicine. Develop it he did; he studied at Uppsala University where he earned his Doctor of Medicine in 1754. Shortly after, he opened a lucrative medical practice in Stockholm, but he never stopped following his true passion: botany. Though he never left Sweden, Berguis’s pursuit of the natural sciences brought him into correspondence with naturalists from around the world, including APS members John and William Bartram. Partnering with his older brother Bengt, the two men cultivated a world-renowned collection of plant specimens. While Bergius attended to his medical practice, his brother Bengt helped with the cataloging, indexing, and culling excerpts from a vast array of other published works. Bergius described their work as a joint effort and was quick to credit his brother’s labor. Through this partnership, Bergius’s produced works that appeared in the publications of the Royal Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London (he was later elected a member to both institutions). Bergius was also an educator, first as a professor at Stockholm University in 1761 then as an assessor at the university’s college of medicine where medical students, physicians, and laymen alike crowded in to hear his lectures on natural history and pharmacology. Bengt died in 1784, Bergius followed in 1790 and, as both were unmarried, they left their considerable estate and library, including a specimen collection that numbered over 15,000, to the Royal Academy of Sciences. To this day, the institution they founded continues to support botanical studies. (PI)