Keisuke_Ito_(botanist)
Keisuke Ito (botanist)
Japanese physician and biologist
Keisuke Ito (伊藤 圭介, Itō Keisuke, February 18, 1803 – January 20, 1901) was a Japanese physician and biologist. He was born in Nagoya.
As a doctor, Ito developed a vaccination against smallpox.[1] He also widely studied the Japanese flora and fauna with Philipp Franz von Siebold, the author of Fauna Japonica and Flora Japonica. Rhododendron keiskei was named after him.[2]
He wrote a translation of Flora Japonica titled Taisei honzou meiso (Japanese:"泰西本草名疏") that was published in 1829.
Ito became a professor at the University of Tokyo in 1881.
He died in 1901, and he was ennobled with the title of baron (danshaku).
In 1901, botanist William Botting Hemsley named a genus of flowering plants in the willow family, Salicaceae, from China and Vietnam, Itoa in his honour.[3]
