Adelbert von Chamisso

Adelbert von Chamisso was best known as a botanist. He was the botanist for the 1816 Kotzebue expedition to California and Hawaii and published some of the earliest descriptions of plant species, natural history, and ethnography from those places. One of his more notable discoveries was the first scientific description of the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica.

In addition to being a botanist, Chamisso was a writer, being best known for his story "Peter Schlemihl" about a man who sells his shadow to the devil, and "Frauen-Liebe und Leben" (A Woman's Love and Life), a lyric poem cycle.