José Celestino Mutis (1732-1808) was a Spanish-Colombian naturalist, physician, and mathematician. He assembled one of the richest botanical collections in the world of his time.

During the middle and later decades of the 18th century the Spanish government subsidized scientific expeditions and encouraged individuals to determine the natural wealth of its American colonies by the systematic study of their flora and fauna. One of these investigators who won world renown was José Celestino Mutis, a descendant of a Majorcan family in the Balearic Islands. He was born in Cadiz, Spain, on April 6, 1732, and spent the last 48 years of his life in Bogotá, the capital of viceregal New Granada and the later Republic of Colombia.

After studying medicine and philosophy at the University of Seville and continuing work in the natural sciences and mathematics while teaching anatomy at the University of Madrid, Mutis visited European centers...