Rene Desfontaines

See also: Desfontaines

Rene Louiche Desfontaines , born the February 14th 1750 with Tremblay (Ille-et-Vilaine) and dead the November 16th 1831 with Paris, is a French botanist.

Biography

After his studies of medicine, Rene Desfontaines studies the natural history under the direction of Bernard de Jussieu. He publishes various work of botany which is worth to him to be allowed on March 2nd 1783 with the Academy of Science, of which he is president in year XIII (1804 - 1805). He is member also of the Académie of medicine.

Thanks to the support of Louis-Guillaume Monnier (1717-1799), it can start an scientific exhibition in North Africa where there remain two years. He studies the flora of the coasts of Barbarie. He brings back of them a considerable herbarium and many objects of natural history. He submits the report/ratio of his voyage in his Atlantic Flore (1798), 2 vol. in-4, with boards. One owes him of the new observations on the date palm, the lofos of Libya, the oak with soft nipples, on the irritability of the plants. Desfontaines succeeds Monnier with the pulpit of botany of the Jardin of the king where it supported vegetable physiology.

It makes appear many works of botany of which:

  • a elementary Course (1796)
  • a Table of the botanical school of the Natural history museum of natural history (1804)
  • a History of the plants and shrubs which can be cultivated in France in open ground (1809)
  • of the Expériences on the artificial insemination of the plants , 1831.

Its courses are very popular and gathers between 500 and 600 people, of which many personalities, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) for example. The first it had the vegetable Organographie and physics like front being the introduction necessary of botany.

It spends the disturbed period of the Revolution without difficulty and does not hesitate to intervene to save botanists, like Louis Ramond (1755-1827) or Charles Louis the Heir to Brutelle (1746-1800). Become blind at the end of its life, it is made lead in the greenhouses of the Natural history museum and tries to recognize the plants with the touch.

Homage

It is in its honor that Hipólito Ruiz López (1754-1815) & Jose Antonio Pavón (1754-1844) named the Desfontainia .

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