Francisco Noronha

Who was Francisco Noronha?

Father Francisco Noronha was a Spanish physician and botanist who resided for some time at Manila, Luzon, Philippines, where he took much effort to organize the Royal Botanic Garden and stock it with valuable plants. Three sets of his water-colour drawings of Javan plants and one set of 108 numbered drawings still exist. Williams describes him as "a Spanish physician and botanist who had visited Madagascar", while Zuidevaart & Van Gent call him "a capable botanist from Manila" who in 1786 had taken over supervision of the museum of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in Java.

He is commemorated in the genus Noronhia of the Oleaceae family and in several plant species including Noronhia emarginata by the Dutch botanists Carl Ludwig Blume and Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt.