250th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1977 - 4 Shilling

Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin was born on 16 February 1727 in Leiden. He came from a French family that had settled in the West Indies. From there they had come to Leiden via Paris. He studied medicine, chemistry and botany. In addition to his studies Jacquin dealt with the plant treasures of the imperial gardens in Schönbrunn. Through this activity he became acquainted with Emperor Franz I, to whom the garden and the menagerie Schönbrunns were especially close to the heart. He gave Jacquin the direction of a scientific expedition to tropical Central America. He left Vienna on December 9, 1754, and did not return until July 17, 1759, with an extensive collection of plants and animals. Some plants of the Jacquin expedition still lived at the turn of the 20th century. In 1763 he accepted the offer of Count Siegfried Herberstein to take over the newly established pulpit for chemistry and metallurgy in Schemitz. In 1768 he was appointed to the chair of botany and chemistry at the University of Vienna. Associated with this was the office of a director of the Botanical Garden of the University. In the following decades, until his death on 26 October 1817, he created an extensive literary work in the field of botany, which includes 36 volumes. Around 3000 copper plates were made for this purpose. The brand image shows a portrait of the botanist after documents from the National Library.