Johann Gottlieb Fleischer

Johann Gottlieb Fleischer (15 October 1797 – 22 April 1838) was a Baltic German botanist and ornithologist. He is remembered as the person who described and gave the binomial name for the lesser kestrel in 1818, naming it naumanni for his friend Johann Andreas Naumann.

Fleischer was the son of a coppersmith and was born in Mitau. He studied at the local grammar school before studying medicine at the University of Dorpat from 1817 to 1822. He received a doctorate with a thesis on Aneurysmatis varicosi complicati historia. He then worked as a physician in Mitau. He wrote on the flora and fauna of the region collaborating with Emanuel Lindemann (1795–1845) and Alexander Bunge on plants. He described the lesser kestrel in 1818 and named it after his friend Johann Andreas Naumann, father of the ornithologist Johann Friedrich Naumann. Hie died from tuberculosis.

A member of the Moscow Imperial Society of Naturalists and the Courland Society for Literature and Art he attended a meeting of German naturalists at Hamburg in 1830.

Works

• with C. P. Laurop and V. F. Fischer: Sylvan, ein Jahrbuch fur Forstmänner, Jäger und Jagdfreunde (1813 to 1822);
• with E. Lindemann: Flora der deutschen Ostseeprovinzen Esth-, Liv- und Kurland. Mitau, Leipzig (1839);
• with A. Bunge: Fleischer, Johann Gottlieb: Flora von Esth-, Liv- und Kurland Flora von Esth-, Liv- und Kurland. Mitau, Leipzig (1853).