Peter Thonning was a Danish physician and botanist.

He was sent to Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

 by the Danish government to supervise the plantations of that colony, and he lived there from 1799 to 1803. His herbarium

Herbarium

In botany, a herbarium – sometimes known by the Anglicized term herbar – is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in...

 was destroyed during the shelling of Copenhagen

Battle of Copenhagen (1807)

The Second Battle of Copenhagen was a British preemptive attack on Copenhagen, targeting the civilian population in order to seize the Dano-Norwegian fleet and in turn originate the term to Copenhagenize.-Background:Despite the defeat and loss of many ships in the first Battle of Copenhagen in...

 by the British in 1807. Only the duplicates and manuscripts in the possession of Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher , was a Danish surgeon, botanist and professor of anatomy at the University of Copenhagen...

 (1757–1830) survived. Today, around 1,050 samples are preserved at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden

University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden

The University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden , usually referred to simply as Copenhagen Botanical Garden, is a botanical garden located in the centre of Copenhagen, Denmark...

.

The genus Thonningia of parasitic plants was named after him by Martin Vahl

Martin Vahl (botanist)

Martin Henrichsen Vahl was a Danish-Norwegian botanist and zoologist.He studied botany in Copenhagen and in Uppsala under Carolus Linnaeus. He edited Flora Danica fasc. XVI-XXI , Symbolæ Botanicæ I-III , Eclogæ Americanæ I-IV and Enumeratio Plantarum I-II...

. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Thonn. when citing

Author citation (botany)

In botanical nomenclature, author citation refers to citing the person who validly published a botanical name, i.e. who first published the name while fulfilling the formal requirements as specified by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature...

 a botanical name

Botanical name

A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar and/or Group epithets must conform to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants...

.