Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1 February 1761 – 16 November 1836) was a German
mycologist
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungus, fungi, including their genetics, genetic and biochemistry, biochemical properties, their Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy and ethnomycology, their use to humans, including as a so ...
who made additions to
Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
'
mushroom
A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
The standard for the name "mushroom" is t ...
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
.
Early life
Persoon was born in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
at the
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa.
A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...
, the third child of an immigrant
Pomerania
Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...
n father and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
mother. His mother died soon after he was born; at the age of thirteen his father (who died a year later) sent him to Europe for his education.
Education
Initially studying
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
at
Halle, at age 22 (in 1784) Persoon switched to
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
at
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
and
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
. He received a
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
from the "Kaiserlich-Leopoldinisch-Carolinische Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher" in 1799.
Later years
He moved to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
in 1802, where he spent the rest of his life, renting an upper floor of a house in a poor part of town. He was apparently unemployed, unmarried, poverty-stricken and a recluse, although he corresponded with botanists throughout Europe. Because of his financial difficulties, Persoon agreed to donate his herbarium to the
House of Orange
The House of Orange-Nassau (Dutch: ''Huis van Oranje-Nassau'', ) is the current reigning house of the Netherlands. A branch of the European House of Nassau, the house has played a central role in the politics and government of the Netherlands ...
, in return for an adequate pension for life.
Academic career
The origin of Persoon's botanical interest is unknown. The earliest of his works was ''Abbildungen der Schwämme'' (Illustrations of the fungi), published in three parts, in 1790, 1791, and 1793. In 1794, Persoon introduced the term for the furrowed
ascomata
An ascocarp, or ascoma (), is the fruiting body ( sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. Ascocarps are mos ...
of the lichen genus ''
Graphis''. Between 1805 and 1807, he published two volumes of hi
''Synopsis plantarum'' a popular work describing 20,000 species of all types of plants. But his pioneering work was in the fungi, for which he published several works, beginning with th
''Synopsis methodica fungorum''(1801); it is the starting point for nomenclature of the
Uredinales,
Ustilaginales
The Ustilaginales are an order of fungi within the class Ustilaginomycetes. The order contains 8 families, 49 genera, and 851 species.
''Ustinaginales'' is also known and classified as the smut fungi. They are serious plant pathogens, with onl ...
, and the
Gasteromycetes
The gasteroid fungi are a group of fungi in the Basidiomycota. Species were formerly placed in the obsolete class Gasteromycetes Fr. (literally "stomach fungi"), or the equally obsolete order Gasteromycetales Rea, because they produce spores insi ...
. Persoon described many
polypore
Polypores are a group of fungi that form large fruiting bodies with pores or tubes on the underside (see Delimitation for exceptions). They are a morphological group of basidiomycetes-like gilled mushrooms and hydnoid fungi, and not all polyp ...
species; most were from his own collections in central Europe, while several other tropical species were sent to him from collections made by French botanist
Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré
Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré (September 4, 1789 – January 16, 1854) was a French botanist.
Biography
Gaudichaud was born in Angoulême, to J-J. Gaudichaud and Rose (Mallat) Gaudichaud. He studied pharmacology informally at Cognac and Angoulême, ...
during his circumglobal expedition. These latter fungi are among the first tropical polypores ever described.
In 1815, Persoon was elected a corresponding member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...
.
The genus ''
Persoonia
''Persoonia'', commonly known as geebungs or snottygobbles, is a genus of about one hundred species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae. Plants in the genus ''Persoonia'' are shrubs or small trees usually with smooth bark, simple lea ...
'', a variety of small Australian trees and shrubs, was named after him. The title
''Persoonia'' is also given to a
biannual
An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded in a previous year, and may also refer to the commemoration or celebration of that event. The word was first used for Catholic feasts to commemorate saint ...
scientific journal of molecular phylogeny and evolution of fungi, published jointly by the
National Herbarium of the Netherlands
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, ce ...
and the
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
Fungal Biodiversity Centre.
See also
*
:Taxa named by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon
References
* Duane Isely, ''One hundred and one botanists'' (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 124–126.
External links
Christian Hendrik PersoonPersooniaHunt Institute-botanical archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Persoon, Christiaan Hendrik
German taxonomists
1761 births
1836 deaths
Mycologists
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
South African botanists
18th-century German botanists
19th-century German botanists
18th-century German writers
18th-century German male writers
19th-century German writers
19th-century German male writers
Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
South African people of Dutch descent
South African people of German descent