Paul Günther Lorentz

Paul (Pablo) Günther Lorentz (30 August 1835 – 6 October 1881) was a German-Argentine botanist.

Lorentz was born in Kahla, Thuringia. He initially studied theology at the University of Jena and the University of Erlangen. From 1858, he studied botany at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where he was a pupil of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli. He focused his attention towards the study of mosses, subsequently collecting specimens throughout Europe (the Black Forest, the Austrian Alps, Switzerland, northern Italy and Scandinavia). With Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, he collaborated on Geographie der Moose. In 1868, Lorentz collected and distributed exsiccata specimens under the title Unio itineraria cryptogamica.

In 1870, he immigrated to Argentina, where he was appointed professor of botany at the National University of Córdoba. In 1871–72, he explored the mountainous regions of Tucumán and Catamarca provinces with geologist Alfred Wilhelm Stelzner (1840–1895). Bryological specimens found on the expedition were kept for personal study by Lorentz, while vascular plants that he collected were sent to August Grisebach for further analysis, who described the vascular specimens in the treatise "Plantae Lorentzianae" (1874).

Selected works Beiträge zur Biologie und Geographie der Laubmoose, 1860 Moosstudien, 1864 Bryologisches Notizbuch. : Zum praktischen Gebrauche, 1865 Reiseskizzen aus Argentinien, 1875 La vegetación del nordeste de la provincia de Entre Ríos, informe científico, 1878.

He was honoured in 2007, when botanists R.M. King & H. Rob. published Lorentzianthus, which is a monotypic genus of South American flowering plants in the boneset tribe within the sunflower family.