Spanish botanist known for his explorations of Peru and Chile in 1777-1788 with fellow Spaniard Hipolito Ruiz and French botanist Joseph Dombey. Born in Casatejado, in Cáceres, Pavón grew up with his parents and sister before moving to Madrid at the age of eleven to live with his uncle and study pharmacy. Between 1771 and 1777 he undertook further studies in a variety of fields, including Italian and French, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, geography, pharmacy and botany. It was here that he was influenced by the eminent professor of botany Gómez Ortega, who recommended his students Pavón and Ruiz for the first of three major botanical expeditions to the New World, sponsored by the Spanish King Carlos III. The expedition was spurred by the recent French exploration of the Viceroyalty of Peru and Ruiz was to be the first botanist, Pavón the second, and they were to be accompanied by the French botanist and medic Dombey.

In Peru they worked along the coast near Lima and repeatedly crossed the Andes to collect on the moist eastern slopes as far as Huanuco, Tarma and Huancayo. In Chile (1782-1783) they worked mainly around Concepción, but also journeyed north to Santiago and Valparaiso. At this time there was a great interest in the newly discovered Araucaria as a possible source of timber for shipping. Pavón, accompanied by a naval officer, was the first European to penetrate the forests where it grew and obtain botanical specimens, despite hostile indigenous people.

Dombey returned to Europe in 1784 with the French share of the collections. At this time Pavón and Ruiz also sent their collections back, comprising 55 cases and 31 tubs of economic living plants, bulbs, shoots and seeds, while they stayed on. Making their base in Pazuzo, they continued their fruitful collecting around Huanuco and the tropical forest to the north-east. However, Pavón's life was plagued by misfortune; disaster first struck in August 1785, when Ruiz returned to their encampment to find everything ablaze. Pavón had rescued all that he could, but still nearly all their work and possessions were lost. Nevertheless, the pair continued working and were able to send home yet more material in 1787 before they finally took leave of the continent in 1788, having been there ten years. Little did they know that the collections they had sent after Dombey's departure had also been lost, in a shipwreck off the coast of Portugal, and that they would not be heralded on their return with the rewards they might have expected.

Their Flora Peruviana et Chilensis was published in three volumes from 1798 to 1802, based largely on Dombey's work, who had been forced to wait on Ruiz and Pavón before publishing any of his own work, and then died in 1796 in Montserrat. A fourth volume was stalled by the onset of the Napoleonic wars, while an impoverished Pavón was forced to sell his herbarium specimens to survive. Some were bought by the British botanist A.B. Lambert, who managed to raise plants from some Peruvian seed 30 years old. Pavón also developed a commercial relationship with P.B. Webb, who acquired a large volume of plants now preserved in the Botanical Institute of Florence. However, the bulk of the duo's collection currently remains in Madrid.

Although Pavón suffered a great deal of misfortune and poverty in his life he raised two children, was a professor of botany and director of the Jardín Botánico Madrileña. He published other works besides the volumes from the Chile-Peru expedition, including the Suplemento a la Quinologia (1801), also in collaboration with Ruiz, and a number of lesser monographs written on his own about different genera. In 1826 he wrote a 'Nueva Quinologia' which despite remaining unpublished was used in J.E. Howard's work Examination of Pavon Collection of Peruvian Barks contained in the British Museum (1852 and 1853). Pavón was in communication with many important botanists and explorers of the time, including Alexander von Humboldt, Edmond Boissier and Antonio J. Cavanilles. Through these connections Pavón's name was immortalised in three species (Anemona pavoniana Boiss., Omphalodes pavoniana Boiss. and Echium pavonianum Boiss.) and in the genus Pavonia Cav. (Malvaceae).

Sources:
Anon., 1849, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 1: 208-209
A.M. Coats, 1969, The Quest for Plants: 363-368
F. Teixido, 2005, "José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez (1754-1840)", Bíologos Españoles:
www.citologica.org/fteixido/default.asp?Id=8&Fd=2
F. Verdoorn (ed), 1945, Plants and Plant Science in Latin America, 26: 39.