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Albertus Seba (May 12 1665, Etzel near Friedeburg
Friedeburg

For the municipality in Saxony-Anhalt see Friedeburg, Saxony-Anhalt.Friedeburg is a municipality in the Wittmund , in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approx. 14 km southeast of Wittmund, and 20 km west of Wilhelmshaven....
 - May 2 1736, Amsterdam
Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the Capital of the Netherlands and List of cities in the Netherlands with over 100,000 people of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands of North Holland in the west of the country....
) was a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector.

Born in East-Frisia, Seba moved to Amsterdam as an apprentice and opened around 1700 a pharmacy
Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemistrys, and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of medication....
 near the harbour. Seba asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring exotic plants and animal products he could use for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects, shells and lizards in his house.






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Albertus Seba (May 12 1665, Etzel near Friedeburg
Friedeburg

For the municipality in Saxony-Anhalt see Friedeburg, Saxony-Anhalt.Friedeburg is a municipality in the Wittmund , in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approx. 14 km southeast of Wittmund, and 20 km west of Wilhelmshaven....
 - May 2 1736, Amsterdam
Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the Capital of the Netherlands and List of cities in the Netherlands with over 100,000 people of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands of North Holland in the west of the country....
) was a Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and collector.

Born in East-Frisia, Seba moved to Amsterdam as an apprentice and opened around 1700 a pharmacy
Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemistrys, and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of medication....
 near the harbour. Seba asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring exotic plants and animal products he could use for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects, shells and lizards in his house. From 1711 he delivered drugs to the Russian court in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a types of inhabited localities in Russia and a federal subjects of Russia of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea....
 and sometimes accepted fresh ginger
Ginger

Ginger is a spice which is used for cooking and is also consumed whole as a delicacy or medicine. It is the rhizome of the Zingiber, Zingiber officinale....
 as payment. Seba promoted his collection with the head-physician to the czar, Robert Arskine, and early 1716 Peter the Great bought the complete collection. Seven months later seventeen trunks arrived in Russia. With Seba as an intermediate, Frederik Ruysch
Frederik Ruysch

Frederik Ruysch was a Netherlands botany and anatomy, remembered for his developments in anatomical preservation and the creation of dioramas or scenes incorporating human parts....
, a famous botanist, again sold his collection to the czar. A special building was designed, and from 1728 till 1830 both collections were exposed in the Kunstkammer. With the acquisition of the two collections, the Russian Academy of Sciences
Academy of Sciences

An Academy of Sciences is a national academy or another learned society dedicated to sciences.In non-English speaking countries, the range of academic fields of the members of a national Academy of Science often includes fields which would not normally be classed as "science" in English....
 had two modern, very well-documented collections at its disposal.

In 1728 Seba had become a member of the Royal Society
Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence....
. In 1735 Linnaeus visited him twice. In 1734 Seba had published a Thesaurus
Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a work that contains synonyms and sometimes antonyms, in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations....
 of animal specimens with beautiful engravings. The full name of the Thesaurus is, with a dual Latin–Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
 title, Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio — Naaukeurige beschryving van het schatryke kabinet der voornaamste seldzaamheden der natuur (Accurate description of the very rich thesaurus of the principal and rarest natural objects). The last two of the four volumes were published after his death (1759 and 1765). Today, the original 446-plate volume is on permanent exhibit at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague
The Hague

The Hague is the third largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 475,904 and an area of approximately 100 km?....
, Netherlands
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
. Recently, a complete example of the Thesaurus sold for US $460,000 at an auction. In 2001, Taschen Books published a reprint of the Thesaurus.

Sources

  • Driessen, J. (1996) Tsaar Peter de Grote en zijn Amsterdamse vrienden.
  • Driessen-Van het Reve, J.J. (2006) De Kunstkamera van Peter de Grote. De Hollandse inbreng, gereconstrueerd uit brieven van Albert Seba en Johann Daniel Schumacher uit de jaren 1711-1752.


External links

  • , Catalogue for Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities on the Taschen website
  • , Brooklyn-based folk/experimental music and art collective named after Albertus Seba's collection of oddities
  • Web page of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek on the Thesaurus exhibition