Species Gunnera perpensa

For Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718–1773), Norwegian clergyman, naturalist collector and renowned scholar. He studied at the universities of Copenhagen (1737), Halle (1742) and Jena (1745), became professor of theology at the Copenhagen University (1754) and bishop of Trondheim (1758). He founded Norway’s first scientific institution, Det Trondhiemske Selskab (The Trondheim Society), which became the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in 1766. He was the author of Flora Norvegica (1766–1776) and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He discovered many plants, animals, fish and birds not known to science and had extensive correspondence with the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus about them.