Candolle, Alphonse De

(b. Paris, France, 17 October 1806; d. Geneva, Switzerland, 4 April 1893),

botany, phytogeography.

Alphonse de Candolle was the son of the Genevan botanist Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle and Fanny Torros. He spent the first years of his life at Paris, then at Montpellier, where his father taught at the university. In 1816 he went to Geneva, where he followed a classical curriculum and, in 1825, received a bachelor’s degree in science. In spite of his devotion to botany, he turned to the study of jurisprudence, earning his doctorate in law in 1829. Under the guidance of his father, Candolle continued his research in taxonomy and became honorary professor at the Geneva Academy in 1831. In 1835 he succeeded his father in the chair of botany at the university and in the directorship of the botanical gardens. In the same year Candolle published his standard botanical text, Introduction à l’étude de la botanique, which was translated into German and Russian. By 1850 he had given up teaching to concentrate on research.

Candolle did not forget his training in law, and took part in the public life of the city. He was responsible for the introduction of postage stamps into Switzerland. In 1866, however, he withdrew completely from public affairs.

Besides his interest in politics. Candolle was passionately devoted to the history of science and in 1873 published a remarkable book. Histoire des sciences et des savants depuis deux siècles. The book displays both the naturalist’s objectivity and the jurist’s clarity. Darwin had just published his own works when Candolle wrote the Histoire; and Candolle was enthusiastic over the thesis of natural selection, which he applied with keen intelligence to the moral and intellectual characteristics of man and of human societies.

Until his death Candolle maintained his interest in the learned societies of his country, especially the Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, the oldest of the itinerant associations in Europe. His personal library and herbarium, in the family residence in the Cour St.-Pierre, was a “sanctuary” of botany, where numerous researchers from all over the world came to submit their work and to discuss their ideas with the Genevan master. Candolle had the satisfaction of seeing his son, Casimir, follow in his footsteps and continue the line of the Candolle botanists.

Candolle’ most outstanding work is his Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855), which is still the key work of phytogeography. He ushered in new methods of investigation and analyzed with exactitude the causes of the distribution of plant life over the surface of the globe. Besides his research he carried on the publication of the prodromus, a vast treatise on phytotaxonomy begun by his father in 1824. Mention should also be made of Origine des plantes cultivées 1882).

Most of Candolle’s numerous publications are monographs dealing with important plant families. Among them are those on the Campanulaceae (1830), the Myrsinaceae (1834), the Apocynaceae (1843), the sandalwoods (1857), and the Begoniaceae (1860). Other reports concern the laws of nomenclature, and still others are on geobotany and the origin of species and of cultivated plants. Candolle also wrote books and articles on plant biology, showing an interest in raphides (1825), hothouses (1829), seed germination, the age of trees (1831), diseases of the grapevine, the dormancy of plants (1851), the culture of fruit trees, and the movement of plant life.

Candolle’s name fails to appear in any of the important discoveries that underline the evolution of a science, yet most of his works show great lucidity as well as a critical and objective spirit and remain classics in the field.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Among Candolle’s works are Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis, VII XVII –1873), the completion of his father’s work; Géographie botanique raisonnée, 2 vols. (Paris-Geneva,1855); Lois de la nomenclature botanique (Paris, 1867); La phytogévgraphie ou l’art de décrire tes végétaux considérédsous différents points de vue (Paris, 1880); Origine des plantes cultivées (Paris, 1882, 1883, 1886), trans. into Italian (1883) and into English and German (1884); and Nouvelles remarques sur la nomenclature botanique (Geneva, 1883).

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Candolle are E. Blanchard, “A. de Candolle,” in Journal des savants (1894), 353; G. Bonnier, “Alphonse de Candolle,” in Revuescientifique, 51 (1893); J. Briquet, “Biographies des botanistes à Genève (1500–1931),” in Bulletin de la Société botanique suisse, 50a (1940), 130–147; H. Christ, “Notice biographique sur A. de Candolle,” in Bulletin herbier Boissier, 1 (1893), 203; O. Drude. “A. de Candolle,” in Leopoldina, 31 , no. 1 (1895); G. L. Goodale, “A Sketch of A, de Candolle,” in American Journal of Science, 46 (1893), 236; and M. Micheli, “Alphonse de Candolle et son oeuvre scientitique,” in Archives des sciences physiques et naturelles, 30 (1893).

P. E. Pilet