Candolle botanist biography

The information below is derived from many sources; major reference texts are listed at the foot of the page.

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle was born on 4th February 1778 in Geneva, Switzerland, to a family which had originated in Provence, France but had left there nearly 200 years earlier to live in Switzerland and so escape religious persecution.

As a child De Candolle enjoyed school and did well there, going on to undertake medical studies at Collège Calvin (formerly Collège de Genève, which was founded by John Calvin) under the tutorship of Jean Pierre Étienne Vaucher, who encouraged Augustin to focus his attention mainly on botany.

De Candolle first job was in a herbarium in Paris. There he documented many hundreds of plants while also working on new system for - Classifying plant families.

In 1807 Augustin was made professor of botany in the medical faculty at the University of Montp