Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Acharius, Erik

For works with similar titles, see Erik Acharius.

​Acharius, Erik, a Swedish physician and botanist, born at Gefle in 1757. The son of a comptroller of customs, he studied first in his native town, and then in 1773 at the University of Upsal, where Linnaeus was one of his teachers. In 1782 he took the degree of M.D. at the University of Lund, and practised thereafter in various districts of Sweden. But the direction of his studies had been determined by his contact with Linnæus, and he found his appropriate sphere when he was appointed Professor of Botany at the Wadstena Academy in 1801. Five years before he had been admitted a member of the Academy at Stockholm. He devoted himself to the study of the cryptogamic orders of plants, and especially of the family of lichens. All his publications were connected with this subject, the Lichenographia Universalis (Göttingen, 1804) being the most important. Acharius died of apoplexy in 1819. His name has been given by botanists to more than one species of plants.

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