Daniel Solander

Daniel Solander
Painting by William Parry made after Captain Cook's second voyage (c. 1775–1776). This depicts Omai, a Tahitian, Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander (seated).
Born	(1733-02-19)19 February 1733 Piteå, Norrland, Sweden
Died	13 May 1782(1782-05-13) (aged 49) London
Residence	Sweden and England
Nationality	Swedish
Fields	Botany Zoology
Alma mater	Uppsala University
Author abbrev. (botany)	Sol.

Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander (19 February 1733 – 13 May 1782) was a Swedish naturalist and an Apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.

Solander was born in Piteå, Norrbotten, Sweden, to Rev. Carl Solander a Lutheran principal, and Magdalena née Bostadia. Solander enrolled at Uppsala University in July 1750 and initially studied languages, the humanities and law. The professor of botany was the celebrated Carl Linnaeus who was soon impressed by young Solander's ability and accordingly persuaded his father to let him study natural history. Solander traveled to England in June 1760 to promote the new Linnean system of classification. In February 1763 he began cataloguing the natural history collections of the British Museum, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June the following year.

In 1768 Solander gained leave of absence from the British Museum and with his assistant Herman Spöring accompanied Joseph Banks on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean aboard the Endeavour. They were the botanists who inspired the name Botanist Bay (which later became Botany Bay) for the first landing place of Cook's expedition in Australia. Solander helped make and describe an important collection of Australian plants while the Endeavour was beached at the site of present-day Cooktown for nearly seven weeks, after being damaged on the Great Barrier Reef. These collections later formed the basis of Banks' Florilegium.