19th-century French botanists

Dominique_Clos

Dominique Clos (25 May 1821, Sorèze – 19 August 1908) was a French physician and botanist.
He studied medicine and sciences in Toulouse and Paris, obtaining his medical degree in 1845 and his PhD in natural sciences in 1848. In 1853 he succeeded Alfred Moquin-Tandon as professor of botany at the University of Toulouse, maintaining this position until his retirement in 1889. At Toulouse, he made major contributions to its botanical garden and herbarium. From 1881 to 1908, he was a correspondent-member of the Académie des sciences.
He was the author of numerous works on descriptive botany, plant teratology, phytogeography and agricultural botany. As a taxonomist, he described many species from various plant families. Taxa with the specific epithet of closianus are named in his honor' an example being Astragalus closianus.

Gaspard_Adolphe_Chatin

Gaspard Adolphe Chatin (30 November 1813, Tullins – 13 January 1901) was a French physician, mycologist and botanist who was born in Tullins Isère, and died in Les Essarts-le-Roi. He was the first to prove that goiter was related to iodine deficiency.
He studied at the Faculté de Médecine in Paris and received his doctorate in May 1840. In 1841, he became Chief Pharmacist at the Beaujon Hospital in Paris, and in 1859 at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. He taught botany at the Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie, which he directed from 1874. In April 1886, there were student riots at the school, and his dismissal was demanded. He retired in August 1886 with the title of honorary director.
He was a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine (1853) and the Académie des Sciences (1874). He was a member of the Société Botanique de France, which he led in 1862, 1878, 1886 and 1896. In 1878, he became an Officer of the Legion d'honneur.
He was the father of the botanist and zoologist Joannes Charles Melchior Chatin (1847–1912).

Édouard_Bureau

Louis Édouard Bureau (25 May 1830 in Nantes – 14 December 1918 in Paris) was a French physician and botanist.
Édouard Bureau began his medical studies in Nantes in 1848, where he held the post of director of the Muséum de Nantes (Nantes Museum). He completed his medical degree in Paris in 1852. In 1872 he obtained a post as a naturalist assistant at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (French National Museum of Natural History) in the laboratory of Adolphe Brongniart, where he replaced Edmond Tulasne. In 1874 he received appointment to the new botany post dealing with classification. Beginning in 1875, he was a director of the herbaria at the museum. He was a professor at the museum from 1874 until he retired in 1905. Adrien Franchet was his assistant in the 80's. He was succeeded by Paul Henri Lecomte.
Bureau was one of the founders of the Société botanique de France (French Botanical Society) and was the chairman in 1875, 1883, 1902 and 1905. In 1895 he was elected to the French Academy of Medicine. From 1895 to 1917, he was a member of the Comité travaux of the historiques et scientifiques (French Committee for Historical and Scientific Endeavors).
Bureau was a significant contributor to Baillon’s Dictionnaire de Botanique (Botanical Dictionary). He wrote the chapters on the Moraceae, including the Artocarpeae (the breadfruit tribe), for volume XVII (1873) of Candolle’s Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis (A preliminary natural system for the plant kingdom). Together with Karl Moritz Schumann, he wrote the Bignoniaceae section of Volume VIII of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius’s Flora brasiliensis (Flora of Brazil).
Bureau was particularly interested in paleobotany and significantly increased the museum's paleontological holdings. From 1910–1914 he published a two-volume work on the fossils of the Loire basin, and in 1911, he published a further work specifically on the Devonian there.The species Rhododendron bureavii, belonging to the taxonomically complex group of elepidote (nonscaly) rhododendrons, was named in his honor and was based upon specimens from China in his private collection.

Charles_Eugène_Bertrand

Charles Eugène Bertrand (2 January 1851, in Paris – 18 August 1917) was a French botanist, paleobotanist and geologist. He is remembered for his research involving the formation of coal.
He studied sciences in Paris, where he had as influences botanist Joseph Decaisne and plant physiologist Pierre Paul Deherain. In 1874 he obtained his doctorate in sciences, and was later appointed professor of botany at the University of Lille (1878). From 1881 to 1887, he was head of the Archives botaniques du nord de la France.In 1878 he became a member of the Société botanique de France. He was the father of botanist Paul Charles Édouard Bertrand (1879-1944).

Georges_Colomb

Marie-Louis-Georges Colomb (Lure, Haute-Saône, 25 May 1856 – Nyons, 3 January 1945) was a French botanist, science populariser, and a pioneer of French comics, known as bandes dessinées .
Under the pseudonym Christophe (playing on "Christophe Colomb", the French name for Columbus), Colomb created comics that were popular among the French intelligentsia, yet were published in Le Petit Français illustré, a children's paper. His popular L'idée fixe du savant Cosinus (1893–1899) featured a brilliant, absent-minded scientist. His other comics included La Famille Fenouillard (probably the first French comic, 1889); Le Sapeur Camember (1890–1896); Les Malices de Plick et Plock (1893–1904); and Le Baron de Cramoisy (1899).
Colomb's works were comic sketches exploring the quirks of his title characters. Images to him were more vital than words in communicating with children (the dialogue and Colomb's editorial remarks were always outside the picture frame). His frames have been said to anticipate the "visual grammar" of movies and television.Colomb retired as Deputy Director of the Sorbonne's botanical laboratory.
Novelist Marcel Proust was a student of Colomb in his youth, and seems to have taken an interest in botany from him—Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) presents botanical knowledge and speculation to such an extent that botany "constitutes an alternative lens through which the human world of the novel can be viewed."

Victor_Jacquemont

Venceslas Victor Jacquemont (8 August 1801 – 7 December 1832) was a French botanist and geologist known for his travels in India.
Born in Paris on August 8, 1801, Victor Jacquemont was the youngest of four sons of Frédéric François Venceslas Jacquemont de Moreau (1757-1836) and Rose Laisné. He studied medicine and later took an interest in botany. His early travels took him around Europe. He was lightly built and capable of living on a very frugal diet.
After being invited by the Jardin des Plantes to collect plant and animal specimens from a country of his choice for 240 pounds a year, Jacquemont traveled to India leaving Brest in August 1828. He arrived at Calcutta on 5 May 1829. He went to Delhi on 5 March 1830 and went onwards towards the western Himalayas. He visited Amber in Rajputana, met with the Sikh Emperor Ranjit Singh at his capital of Lahore, and visited the kingdom of Ladakh in the Himalaya. He also visited Bardhaman (Burdwan) in Bengal in November 1829. He died of cholera in Bombay on 7 December 1832. The standard author abbreviation Jacquem. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.Several plants are named for him, including Vachellia jacquemontii, the Himalayan White Birch (Betula jacquemontii), the Indian Tree Hazel (Corylus jacquemontii), Afghan Cherry (Prunus jacquemontii), and the cobra lily or Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema jacquemontii).

Jules_Aimé_Battandier

Jules Aimé Battandier (28 January 1848 – 18 September 1922) was a French botanist who was a native of Annonay, department of Ardèche. He was an authority on Algerian flora.
In 1875, he became head of the pharmacy at Mustapha Pacha hospital, and in 1879 was a professor to the faculty of medicine and pharmacy in Algiers. He has several botanical species named after him, including Cytisus battandieri, commonly known as the Moroccan broom.

Adolphe-Théodore_Brongniart

Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (French: [adɔlf teodɔːʁ bʁɔ̃ɲaːʁ]) FRS FRSE FGS (14 January 1801 – 18 February 1876) was a French botanist. He was the son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart and grandson of the architect, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Brongniart's pioneering work on the relationships between extinct and existing plants has earned him the title of father of paleobotany. His major work on plant fossils was his Histoire des végétaux fossiles (1828–37). He wrote his dissertation on the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), an extant family of flowering plants, and worked at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris until his death. In 1851, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Brongn. when citing a botanical name.