Augustin Pyrame de Candolle

Augustin Pyrame de Candolle , 1778-1841, Swiss botanist. Considered the most important Swiss botanist of his era, de Candolle wrote on a wide variety of botanical topics, from medical botany to philosophical treatises on plant morphology and systematics. He spent most of his career at the botanical garden in Geneva, where he developed a system of plant classification that became the foundation for the method used today. The last 25 years of his life were spent on a monumental work, Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis, in which he proposed to classify and describe every seed plant species. He completed the first seven volumes, and the last ten volumes were completed by specialists and edited by his son, Alphonse de Candolle. He also produced monographs of 100 plant families.

Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de (1778–1841) A Swiss botanist who studied in Geneva and settled in Paris in 1796. At the request of the French government, he conducted a botanical and agricultural survey of the whole of France, the results of which were published in 1813. In 1816 he returned to the University of Geneva as professor of natural history and devoted the remainder of his life to developing his own system of botanical classification, which he tried to make more ‘natural’ than previous classifications. He began his most famous work, Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis in 1824. Seven volumes were published before his death and a further 10 by his son, Alphonse de Candolle.