Quick Facts
Biography
Christen Friis Rottbøll (born 3 March 1727 at Hørbygård, Denmark – died 15 June 1797 in Copenhagen) was a Danish physician and botanist and pupil of Carolus Linnaeus.
Education and career
He studied at the University of Copenhagen, first theology, then medicine, in which in took his doctorate degree in 1755 (De morbis deuteropathicis seu Sympathier). He then travelled abroad 1757–1761 to further his studies of medicine, and to study chemistry and botany – the latter subject at Uppsala University with Linnaeus.
From 1761, he was executive at the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen, and succeeded Georg Christian Oeder as its director in 1770. He was appointed professor at the Chair of Medicine in 1776 and received the title of "royal adviser" (konferensråd) in 1784.
Work on smallpox
As a medical doctor, he studied smallpox and reformed the vaccination programme that had run in Copenhagen since 1755. He abolished pre and post treatment and instead advised systematic weakening of the inoculum before application.
Botany
As a botanist, Rottbøll gave out the first comprehensive list of the Flora of Greenland, he published descriptions of plants from the Danish colonies in India collected by Johann Gerhard König, and similarly of plants from Suriname collected by Daniel Rolander.
Rottbøll named the plant genus Rolandra (Asteraceae) after Rolander and the genus Kyllinga (Cyperaceae) after Peder Kylling. Carolus Linnaeus the Younger named the genus Rottboellia (Poaceae) after him.