Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini was a German naturalist known for this work on shells. Martini was a physician and conchologist and began to publish this work at Hamburg in 1769. It is an illustrated catalogue of the shells he observed. Martini died before the work could be finished and additional volumes were completed by Johann Hieronymus Chemnitz between 1779 and 1795, drawing upon the specimens held in the cabinet of curiosities of Christian VII of Denmark.