Carl Ludwig (in Russia, Lev Fedorovich) Goldbach (1793-1824) was a favourite pupil of G.F. Hoffmann. Goldbach moved to Russia from Germany, together with his father who became Professor of Astronomy in Moscow University (Lipschitz 1940a) in 1804.

Goldbach was an outstanding plant taxonomist. He was, however, a very modest person and published only a few articles (besides, he died very young). Nevertheless, Goldbach collected plants himself and accumulated an extensive herbarium. After the Moscow fire in 1812, Goldbach purchased a number of the surviving sheets, including more or less scorched specimens from D. Gruneberg and perhaps others from other sources.

Goldbach's herbarium, about 10,000 specimens, was bought after his death by the sons of the merchant S. Alexeev and presented to the Herbarium of the Moscow Society of Naturalists (Shevyrev 1855), which was later merged with the herbarium of Moscow University (Smirnov 1940). Many interesting and important specimens have been extracted from Goldbach's collection during the 20th century. The rest of it, which contains numerous poorly labelled specimens, is preserved in separate boxes.

Goldbach was commemorated by De Candolle in the genus Goldbachia (Cruciferae).

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