De Candolle

De Candolle, the name of four generations of botanists, the first of whom was Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, who was of Provencal descent, and was born at Geneva in 1778. He studied at Geneva, where Vaucher directed his attention to botany, and at Paris, where he gained the friendship of Jussieu, Cuvier, Biot, and Lamarck, and graduated as M.D. in 1804. In 1799 he published Historia Plantarum Succulentarum, and between 1803 and 1815 the third edition of the Flore Francaise, in the introduction to which he set out his natural system of classification. In 1807 he was appointed professor of botany at Montpellier, and in 1816 at Geneva, a post he retained till, in 1834, he was succeeded by his son Alphonse. From 1824 he devoted himself to the great exposition of his system in a Species Plantarum entitled Prodromus systematis regni vegetabilis, of which he executed seven volumes, the completion having only recently been accomplished by his son and grandsons. He also laid the foundations of one of the largest herbaria in the world. He died at Turin in 1841. Augustin de Candolle shares with the Jussiens the honour of establishing the natural system in place of the artificial system of Linnaeus.