Biography

French botanist. Born in Saint-Nabord (Vosges), he graduated in natural sciences in 1881 and earned his teacher's diploma in 1884. While engaged to teach science at the lycée Saint-Louis de Paris, he also conducted doctoral research on phloem in angiosperms in the botany laboratory at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle under Philippe van Tieghem, which he published in 1889. Subsequent field work took him to many parts of the world: Congo, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, the Antilles, French Guiana, Japan, French Indochina, and Indonesia, from which he brought back numerous specimens, more than 2,000 from Indochina alone. After volunteering for some twenty years at the Muséum, he succeeded Louis Édouard Bureau in 1906 as Professor of Botany, and remained in this post until his retirement in 1931. He was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1917. His interest was in tropical botany, especially in the areas of plant anatomy and physiology. He also made important contributions to the cultivation of crops such as rubber, cotton, coffee and vanilla in the French colonies. His publications include Le Café: Culture, Manipulation, Production (1899), Les Boix Coloniaux (1923), Sapotaceae (1932) and, most notably, the multi-volume Flore Générale de l'Indochine (1907-1950).

Biography

French botanist. Born in Saint-Nabord (Vosges), he graduated in natural sciences in 1881 and earned his teacher's diploma in 1884. While engaged to teach science at the lycée Saint-Louis de Paris, he also conducted doctoral research on phloem in angiosperms in the botany laboratory at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle under Philippe van Tieghem, which he published in 1889. Subsequent field work took him to many parts of the world: Congo, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, the Antilles, French Guiana, Japan, French Indochina, and Indonesia, from which he brought back numerous specimens, more than 2,000 from Indochina alone. After volunteering for some twenty years at the Muséum, he succeeded Louis Édouard Bureau in 1906 as Professor of Botany, and remained in this post until his retirement in 1931. He was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1917. His interest was in tropical botany, especially in the areas of plant anatomy and physiology. He also made important contributions to the cultivation of crops such as rubber, cotton, coffee and vanilla in the French colonies. His publications include Le Café: Culture, Manipulation, Production (1899), Les Boix Coloniaux (1923), Sapotaceae (1932) and, most notably, the multi-volume Flore Générale de l'Indochine (1907-1950).