Species Gorteria diffusa

For David de Gorter (1717–1783), Dutch botanist, physician, plant collector, professor of medicine at the University of Harderwijk, where he also studied, and possibly also for his father, Johannes de Gorter (1689–1762), professor of medicine at Harderwijk from 1725–1754. De Gorter Jr graduated in 1734. In 1735 Linnaeus came to Harderwijk where he obtained his PhD (under De Gorter Sr). A friendship sprang up between the younger De Gorter and Linnaeus. Together they made collecting trips around Harderwijk, with De Gorter subsequently authoring one of the first floras to use Linnaeus’s form of binomial nomenclature, Flora Belgica (1767). After retiring from the university, De Gorter became chief physician at the court of Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna), Empress of Russia, succeeded by his son.