Harry van Bruggen

Heinrich (Harry) Wilhelm Eduard van Bruggen (December 6, 1927 in Amsterdam – February 8, 2010 in Amersfoort) was a Dutch amateur botanist.

Personal life After finishing secondary school, van Bruggen became an accountant, first in his uncle's company, later with Koninklijke Hoogovens, where he became the head of the Administration. In 1950, he married Anna Blom, with whom he had a son; she died in 1996. In April 2000 he remarried with Liesbeth Bakker.

Contributions to botany In the late fifties, van Bruggen obtained from an aquarium-plant importer an Aponogeton species which he failed to be able to name using the existing literature. He concluded that it was a new species, unknown to science, and with the help of Hendrik de Wit he described the new species as Aponogeton rigidifolius H. Bruggen. In subsequent years he published a revision of the genus Aponogeton in several parts (organised geographically), culminating in his magnum opus, a complete monograph of this genus, which was well received in professional circles. In total, van Bruggen described 13 new Aponogeton species.

Two Aponogeton species were named after van Bruggen: A. vanbruggenii C. B. Hellquist & S. W. L. Jacobs (Australia) and A. bruggenii S. R. Yadav & R. S. Govekar (India).