Frank Nicholas Meyer

Frank Nicholas Meyer
Frank N Meyer circa 1909
Born	Frans Nicolaas Meijer (1875-11-30)30 November 1875 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	2 June 1918(1918-06-02) (aged 42) near Shanghai, China
Cause of death	Drowning
Occupation	Botanical exploration
Employer	United States Department of Agriculture

Frank Nicholas Meyer (30 November 1875 – 2 June 1918) was a United States Department of Agriculture explorer who traveled to Asia to collect new plant species. He introduced 2,500 plants into the United States. The Meyer lemon was named in his honor.

He was born Frans Nicolaas Meijer in Amsterdam in 1875. For seven years Meijer was educated at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam as an assistant of Hugo de Vries. He emigrated to the United States in 1901 and became an American citizen in November 1908 adopting the name "Frank N. Meyer". In 1901 he first went to work for Erwin F. Smith at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1902, Meyer began working at USDA's Plant Introduction Station in Santa Ana, California. Meyer was hired in 1905 by the USDA in their Office of Seed and Plant Introduction to send back to the United States economically useful plants. Through an arrangement with Charles Sprague Sargent and David Fairchild Meyer was also to send to the Arnold Arboretum trees and shrubs of ornamental value. They archived images he collected of his travels.

Specimens he collected included apricots, soybeans, and ginkgo biloba.

In June 1918 he traveled to Shanghai over the Yangtze River on the Japanese riverboat Feng Yang Maru. He was last seen leaving his cabin on June 1, at 11:20 pm. On June 5 his body was found some 50 km before the city of Wuhu by a Chinese sailor. He was buried in Shanghai on June 12 and his family in the Netherlands were notified of his death on June 18.