Ruiz, Hipólito

RUIZ, HIPóLITO

(b. Belorado, Burgos province, Spain, 8 August 1754; d. Madrid, Spain, 1816)

botany.

As a youth Ruiz was apprenticed to the pharmacy of an uncle in Madrid, where he learned chemistry and other sciences. In 1772 he began work in the botanical garden at Migas Calientes, where he attracted the attention of the director, Casimiro Gómez Ortega. As a result he was chosen first botanist of a joint French-Spanish expedition to Peru.

The expedition, led by Ruiz, José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez, and Joseph Dombey, reached Lima on 8 April 1778. The objectives of the project were more utilitarian than theoretical, and much of Ruiz’ energy was directed toward the investigation of cinchona. His first publication after returning to Spain in February 1785 was Quinología (1792), which described seven species of cinchona and praised the medicinal qualities of a quina extract that he had developed. (In 1801 Ruiz and Pavón published a supplement to the Quinología to respond to charges made by Francisco Antonio Zea, who questioned the probity of their descriptions and asserted the priority of discoveries by José Celestino Mutis.)

Ruiz next turned to the major portion of the expedition’s work, the Flora Peruviana. A slight introductory volume, the Prodromus, appeared in 1794. It generated an intense dispute with Antonio Cavanilles, who claimed to have already described genera that Ruiz and Pavón announced as newly discovered.

The first three volumes of the richly illustrated Flora Peruviana, published between 1798 and 1802, described 751 plant species through the first seven Linnaean classes. Ruiz spent the rest of his life in futile attempts to raise enough money to finish the project.

Tireless collectors and classifiers of plants, Ruiz and Pavón were extremely conservative theoretical botanists, defending the Linnaean system against all innovations, particularly the reduction of the number of classes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Works written by Ruiz alone include Quinología, o tratado del árbol de la quina o cascarilla (Madrid, 1792), with translations into Italian (Rome, 1792), German (Göttingen, 1794), and English (London, 1800); Relación del viaje hecho a los reynos del Perú y Chile, Agustín J. Barreiro, ed. (Madrid, 1931), translated into English by B. E. Dahlgren as Travels of Ruiz, Pavón and Dombey in Peru and Chile (1777–1778) (Chicago, 1940). Another ed. of the Relación was prepared by Jaime Jaramillo-Arango. 2 vols. (Madrid, 1952). On the controversy with Cavanilles, see Respuesta para desengaño del público a la impugnación que ha divulgado prematuramente el presbitero don Josef Antonio Cavanilles, contra el pródromo de la Flora del Perú (Madrid, 1796).

The major botanical descriptions were published in collaboration with Pavón: Florae Peruvianae et Chilensis prodromus (Madrid, 1794: 2nd ed., Rome, 1797): Flora Peruriana et Chilensis, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1798–1802); and Suplemento a la Quinología (Madrid. 1801).

II. Secondary Literature. A definitive study of the Ruiz-Pavón expedition is Arthur R. Steele, Flowers for the King (Durham, N.C., 1964). See also Enrique Alvarez López, “Algunos aspectos de la obra de Ruiz y Pavón.” in Anales del lnstituto Botánico A. J. Cavanilles, 12 (1953). 5–110.

Thomas F. Glick