Johannes Müller Argoviensis

Müller was born into a farming family on 9 May 1828 in Teufenthal, Switzerland. He received his education at the Reinach gymnasium and then entered the Aargau industrial school, where he was passionate about botany and mathematics. Encouraged by Hans Schinz he built a herbarium of the flora of Aargau. In 1850 and 1851 he studied in Geneva and came into contact with prominent botanists Edmond Boissier and Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle (who offered him the vacant post of curator at his herbarium).

In the spring of 1851 he collected in southern France with Jean Étienne Duby. The herbarium specimens from this trip were later sent to several herbaria in Europe. The following year, Müller travelled with Boissier to collect plants in the Alps of Savoy, the valley of Aoste, and Piedmont.

The Swiss Society of Natural Sciences published his first work in 1857, Monographie de la famille des Résédacées, for which he received the Candolle prize and earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Zurich. He then published works on Euphorbiaceae, Characeae, Apocynaceae, mosses and fungi. His annotated catalog of lichens, published in 1862, was considered a standard work in its day.

He was appointed instructor in Geneva in 1868, in charge of teaching medical and pharmaceutical botany at the Geneva Academy from 1871. He held the chair in 1876 and retired in 1889 for health reasons. Afterwards he served as curator of the Delessert herbarium and director of the Geneva Botanical Garden until his death on 28 January 1896.

He served as president of the Botanical Society of Geneva from 1878 to 1882. He was a member of the Linnaean Society of London, the German Botanical Society, the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium, and other academic societies.

The genus Muellerargia of the family Cucurbitaceae was named in his honor by Alfred Cogniaux, as well as the following species:

• (Rubiaceae) Psychotria argoviensis Steyerm.[1]

• Briquet, John (1896). "Book-notes, News, etc". Journal of Botany: British and Foreign. 34: 191.
• John Briquet, Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Jean Müller // Bulletin de l'Herbier Boissier, Genève, 1896