), was a German botanist and naturalist, and son of the botanist Franz Carl Mertens

Franz Carl Mertens

Franz Carl Mertens was a German botanist who was a native of Bielefeld. He specialized in the field of phycology....

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Mertens was aboard the Russian vessel Senyavin under Captain Lieutenant Fedor Petrovich Litke with orders to explore the coasts of Russian America and Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

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This turned out to be one of the most productive voyages of discovery in the nineteenth century. Mertens, ornithologist Baron von Kittlitz, and mineralogist Alexander Postels

Alexander Philipov Postels

Alexander Filipov Postels , was a Russian naturalist, mineralogist and artist.Postels studied at St.Petersburg University and in 1826 lectured there on inorganic chemistry....

 collected and described over 1 000 new species of animal life, and some 2 500 specimens of plants, algae, and rocks.

Shortly after this voyage, Litke and the Senyavin set out on another scientific expedition to Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

, the chief scientist being Mertens who died two weeks after the expedition's return to Kronstadt.

Cape Mertens (64°32’N, 172°25’W) east of the Chukot Peninsula at the exit from the Senyavin Straits is named in his honour, as is the ctenophore

Ctenophore

The Ctenophora are a phylum of animals that live in marine waters worldwide. Their most distinctive feature is the "combs", groups of cilia that they use for swimming, and they are the largest animals that swim by means of cilia – adults of various species range from a few millimeters to in size...

 genus Mertensia created by Lesson in 1830 and the family Mertensiidae by Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...

 in 1860, as well as many specific names. The plant genus Mertensia

Mertensia

Mertensia is a genus of about 40 species of perennial herbaceous plants with bell-shaped blue flowers opening from pink-tinged buds. This is one of several plants commonly called bluebell.The genus is named after the German botanist Franz Carl Mertens....

is in honour of his father.