OUDEMANS, CORNEILLE ANTOINE JEAN ABRAM

(b. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 7 December 1925; d. Arnhem, Netherlands, 29 August 1906), medicine, botany, mycology.

Oudemans was the son of Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans, an educator, and Jacoba Adriana Hammecker. Two of their other children became prominent scientists: Jean Abraham Cretien Oudemans, an astronomer, and Antoine Corneille Oudemans, a chemist. Oudemans received his elementary education on Weltevreden, Java, where his father was the principal of a grammar school; at the age of fourteen he was sent back to the Netherlands to study Latin and Greek in preparation for admission to a university. Two years later he became a medical student at Leiden, where he was granted the M.D. on 5 November 1847. A subsequent study trip to Paris and Vienna was cut short by the March Revolution of 1848. Soon after his return on 9 August 1848, Oudemans was appointed lecturer in botany, materia medica, and natural history at the clinical school of Rotterdam, where he also set up a practice. While in Rotterdam he was very active in the field of public health and also published the results of his pharmacological investigations.

In 1859 Oudemans was offered the chair of medicine and botany at the Athenaeum of Amsterdam, vacant after Miquel moved to the University of Utrecht. He gave his inaugural lecture on 21 November. When the Athenaeum obtained university status in 1877, Oudemans became its first rector magnificus. In the same year his teaching duty was reduced to systematic botany and pharmacognosy; Hugo de Vries was appointed lecturer in plant physiology and anatomy. After his retirement in 1896 he settled in Arnhem.

While at Amsterdam, Oudemans became increasingly interested in the fungi of the Netherlands, a subject on which he became the national expert. His Révision des champignons (1892–1897) and Catalogue raisonné (1904) are still standard works on Dutch mycology, as is his posthumously published Enumeratio systematica fungorum, on which he worked for twenty-five years. In this book he described all the known European parasitic fungi. The work was published under the supervision of J. W. Moll, professor of botany at Groningen, to which university Oudemans left his collection of parasitic fungi.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works The library of the University of Amsterdam has the following MS notes by Oudemans: “Hebra’s Klinik uber Hautkrankheiten. Angefangen 20 März (1848). Aufgeschrieben in einem Privatkurs von C. A. J. A. Oudemans.”

His earliest published works are De fluxu menstruo (Leiden, 1847), his dissertation; Algemeen verslag der subcommissie voor den Aziatischen braakloop, geheerscht hebbende te Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 1849); Systematisch overzicht der geneeskundige gewassen (Rotterdam, 1851); Aanteekeningen op het systematisch-en pharmacognostisch botanishce gedeelte der Pharmacopoea Neerlandica, 2 vols. (Rotterdam, 1854–1856); Bijdrage tot de kennis van de morphologische en anatomische structuur van de vrucht en het zaad des kamferbooms (Dryobalanops camphora, Colebr.) van Sumatra (Rotterdam, 1855); Brief van de openbare gezondheidscommissie te Rotterdam omtrent het planten van boomen aldaar (n.p., 1855); Flora van Nederland 3 vols. and atlas (Haarlem, 1859–1862; 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1872–1874) and Over de plantkunde, beschouwd in hare trapsgewijze ontwikkeling van de vroegste tijden (Amsterdam, 1859), his inaugural lecture.

Writings from the 1860’s and 1870’s are Brief over de hervorming en uitbreiding van het natuur- en geneeskundig onderwijs aan het Athenaeum Illustre te Amsterdam … (Amsterdam, 1860), written with C. E. V. Schneevoogt; Ueber den Sitz der Oberhaut bei den Luftwurzeln der Orchideen (Amsterdam, 1861); Annotationes criticae in Cupuliferas nonnulas Javanicas (Amsterdam, 1865); Handileidingtot de pharmacognosie van het plantent- en dierenrijk (Haarlem, 1865); Leerboek der plantenkunde, 2 vols. (Utrecht-Amsterdam, 1866–1870); Eerste beginselen der plantenkunde (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Utrecht, 1868); and Rede ter herdenking van den sterfdag van Carolus Linnaeus, eene eeuw na diens verscheiden (Amsterdam, 1878).

His latest works were Leeboek der plantenkunde, ten gebruike bij het hooger onderwijs, I, Vorlmleer en rangschikking der planten (Zaltbommel, 1883; 2nd ed., Nijmegen, 1896) — vols. II and III written by Hugo de Vries; Revisio pyrenomycetum, in regno Batavorum, hujusque detectorum (Amsterdam, 1884); Révision des champignons, tout supérieurs qu’inférieurs, trouvés justqu’àce jour dans les Pyar-Bas, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1893–1897); Beteekenis der geslachtsnamen van de phanerogamen en de vaat kryptogamen (Bussum, 1899); Catalogue raisonné der champignons des Pay-Bas (Amsterdam, 1904); and Enumeratio systematica fungorum, J. W. Moll, R. de Boer, and L. Vuyck, eds., 5 vols. (The Hague, 1919–1924).

In addition Oudemans wrote a large number of papers, a list of more than eighty is in the obituary by J. W. Moll and in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers IV, 715; VIII, 543–544; X, 970–971; XII, 552; and XVII, 657.

II. Secondary Litearature. See P. J. Lotsy, “Corneille Antoine Jean Abram Oudemans,” in Nieuw nederlansdsch biografisch woordenboek I (Leiben, 1911), 1396–1397; J. W. Moll, “C. A. J. A. Outdemans,” in Jaarboek van de K. Akademic van wetenschappen… Amsterdam,62 (1909), 57–105, with bibliography; W. F. R. Suringar, C. A. J. A. Outdemans, “in Eigen Haard, 21 (1895), 773–775; and J. S. Theissen, “Corneille Antoine Jean Oudemans,” in Gedenkboek van het Athenaeum en de Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1632–1932.I (Amsterdam, 1932), 649–650.

Peter W. van der Pas