Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher (November 15, 1757 in Glückstadt, Holstein – December 9, 1830) was a Danish surgeon, botanist and professor of anatomy at the University of Copenhagen. Schumacher carried out significant research work in malacology, in other words on molluscs, and assigned systematic names to many taxa.
He was born to Joachim Christian Schumacher, a sergeant in the infantry of the Duchy of Schleswig, and his wife, Caroline Magdalene in Glückstadt in present-day Germany. In spite of his family's limited means, he received a good upbringing, and was sent to grammar school in Rendsburg. After confirmation became the apprentice of the regiment surgeon, Mehl, a learned and skilled man, who gave his eager student a thorough introduction to both medicine and botany, thereby waking Schumacher's natural gift for science. By 1773, at the age of 16, his keen efforts got him appointed as a military surgeon with his father's battalion in the army stationed in Rendsburg, working under Dr. Mehl's command.
In 1777 he got an 8-month leave from the army enroll as a student at Theatrum Anatomico-chirurgicum in Copenhagen (now a part of the faculty of medicine at the University of Copenhagen). While in Copenhagen he lived on nothing but an advance on his rather low wage and in 1778 he returned starved to his post in Rendsburg. He had however made a good enough impression on professor Christen Friis Rottbøll for him to call Schumacher back to Copenhagen to finish the education and to a position as prosector at the University of Copenhagen.