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Gaspard Bauhin Biography |
Gaspard Bauhin (January 17, 1560 – December 5, 1624) and Jean Bauhin (1541-1613) were Swiss-French botanists.
Gaspard Bauhin introduced binomial nomenclature into taxonomy, which was much later taken up by Linnaeus. Bauhin's work, Pinax theatri botanici (1596), was the first to use this convention for naming of species. He also worked on human anatomical nomenclature.
Jean and Gaspard were the sons of Jean Bauhin (1511-1582), a French physician who had to leave his native country on becoming a convert to Protestantism. Gaspard was born at Basel and studied medicine at Padua, Montpellier, and in Germany. Returning to Basel in 1580, he was admitted to the degree of doctor, and gave private lectures in botany and anatomy. In 1582 he was appointed to the Greek professorship in that university, and in 1588 to the chair of anatomy and botany. He was later made city physician, professor of the practice of medicine, rector of the university, and dean of his faculty.
In addition to Pinax Theatri Botanici, Gaspard planned another work, a Theatrum Botanicum, meant to be comprised in twelve parts folio, of which he finished three; only one, however, was published (1658). He also gave a copious catalogue of the plants growing in the environs of Basel, and edited the works of P. A. Mattioli (1500-1577) with considerable additions. His principal work on anatomy was Theatrum Anatomicum infinitis locis auctum (1592).
His brother, Jean Bauhin, studied botany at Tübingen under Leonard Fuchs (1501-1566). He then travelled with Conrad Gessner, after which he started a practise of medicine at Basel, where he was elected Professor of Rhetoric in 1566. Four years later he was invited to become physician to Duke Frederick I of Württemberg at Montbéliard, where he remained until his death. He devoted himself chiefly to botany. His great work, Historia plantarum universalis, a compilation of all that was then known about botany, was incomplete at his death, but was published at Yverdon in 1650-1651. |
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