Jump to content

Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by KasparBot (talk | contribs) at 12:05, 23 February 2016 (migrating Persondata to Wikidata, please help, see challenges for this article). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle
Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle
Born(1806-10-28)28 October 1806
Paris, France
Died4 April 1893(1893-04-04) (aged 86)
Geneva
NationalityFrance
Switzerland
AwardsLinnean Medal (1889)
Scientific career
Fieldsbotany
InstitutionsUniversity of Geneva
Author abbrev. (botany)A.DC

Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyrame de Candolle (28 October 1806 – 4 April 1893) was a French-Swiss botanist, the son of the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle.

He first devoted himself to the study of law, but gradually drifted to botany and finally succeeded to his father's chair at the University of Geneva. He published a number of botanical works, including continuations of the Prodromus in collaboration with his son, Anne Casimir Pyrame de Candolle. Among his other contributions is the formulation, based on his father's work for the Prodromus, of the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature, which was adopted by the International Botanical Congress in 1867,[1] and was the prototype of the current ICN.

He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1859 and was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London in 1889. He is also known for a study of the religious affiliations of foreign members of the French and British Academies of Science during the Scientific Revolution that demonstrated that in both academies Protestants were more heavily represented than Catholics by comparison with catchment populations. This observation continues to be used (for example in David Landes' 1999 _Wealth and Poverty of Nations, cf. revised paperback edition, 177) as a demonstration that Protestants were more inclined to be scientifically active during the Scientific Revolution than Roman Catholics.

In 1855 de Candolle published Géographie botanique raisonnée This was a ground-breaking book that for the first time brought together the large mass of data being collected by the expeditions of the time. The natural sciences had become highly specialized yet this book synthesized them to explain living organisms within their environment and why plants were distributed the way they were, all upon a geologic scale. This book had a significant impact upon Harvard botanist Asa Gray.[2]

The standard author abbreviation A.DC is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[3]

Works

  • de Candolle, Alphonse (1855). Géographie botanique raisonnée. Paris: V. Masson. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Candolle, Alphonse de - Lois de la nomenclature botanique adoptées par le Congrès international de botanique tenu à Paris en août 1867... Genève et Bale: H. Georg; Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1867. 64 p.
  • Candolle, Alphonse de (Membre Corr. de l'Acad. Sciences, Paris; Foreign Member, Royal Soc, etc.) - Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Siècles. Geneva, 1873.
  • de Candolle, Alphonse (1885) [1882]. Origin of Cultivated Plants. New York: Appleton. Retrieved 19 February 2015. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (First edition in French)

References

Notes
  1. ^ Nicolson, D.H. (1991). "A History of Botanical Nomenclature". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden. 78 (1): 33–56. doi:10.2307/2399589. JSTOR 2399589.
  2. ^ Dupree, A. Hunter (1988). Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 235–236. ISBN 978-0-801-83741-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  3. ^ International Plant Names Index.  A.DC.
Sources
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyrame de Candolle
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alphonse_Pyramus_de_Candolle&oldid=706454404"