This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Gaspard Bauhin is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Gaspard Bauhin, or Caspar Bauhin (January 17, 1560 – December 5, 1624), was a Swiss botanist who wrote Pinax theatri botanici (1596), which described thousands of plants and classified them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus. He also worked on human anatomical nomenclature.
His brother, Johann Bauhin, or Jean Bauhin, was also a physician and botanist.
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.
The Pinax theatri botanici (English, Illustrated exposition of plants) is a landmark of botanical history, describing some 6,000 species and classifying them. The classification system was not particularly innovative, using traditional groups such as "trees", "shrubs", and "herbs", and using other characteristics such utilization, for instance grouping spices into the Aromata. He did correctly group grasses, legumes, and several others. His most important contribution is in the description of genera and species. He introduced many names of genera that were later adopted by Linnaeus, and remain in use. For species he carefully pruned the descriptions down to as few words as possible; in many cases a single word sufficed as description, thus giving the appearance of a two-part name. However, the single-word description was still a description intended to be diagnostic, not an arbitrarily-chosen name (in the Linnaean system, many species names honor individuals, for instance).
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 Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1500-1577) with considerable additions. His principal work on anatomy was Theatrum Anatomicum infinitis locis auctum (1592).
Linnaeus honored the Bauhin brothers in the genus name Bauhinia. The standard author abbreviation C.Bauhin is applied to species he described.
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Duane Isely, One hundred and one botanists (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 49-52
External links
- University of Kyoto Online Pinax theatri botanici (1596)
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 8 January 2009, at 13:00.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Gaspard Bauhin".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.