Johannes Bodaeus van Stapel (in Latin Ioannes Bodaeus a Stapel, in Italian Giovanni Bodeo da Stapel or Giovanni Bodeo da Stapelio, in French Jean/Johannes Bodaeus de Stapel or in Stapel), born in 1602 in Amsterdam, in the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: ''Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden''), and commonly referred to in historiography ...

, and died in 1636 in the same city, was a Dutch botanist and doctor.

Biography

Giovanni Bodeo da Stapelio was born in Amsterdam in the early 17th century. His father, the

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

Engelberto Stapel sent him to study in

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 ...

where his interest in botany was born. During his

medical studies 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 practice ...

in Leiden, he was trained in

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

Adolphus Vorstius Adolphus Vorstius (born Adolphe Vorst; 18 November 1597, Delft – 9 October 1663, Leiden) was a Dutch physician and botanist. Life He was the son of Aelius Everhardus Vorstius and his wife. After attending the Latin School in Leiden, he enrolled ...

(1597-1663).

Work

He is known for his work on the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

version of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routledge ...

Historia plantarum Historia may refer to: * Historia, the local version of the History channel in Spain and Portugal * Historia (TV channel), a Canadian French language specialty channel * Historia (newspaper), a French monthly newspaper devoted to History topics * ...

, completed before his death in 1636 and published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1644 by his father. This work is an essential reference for western botanists of the time. The Latin translation is that of Theodorus Gaz. This Latin version has 1,200 pages, with 50 black and white illustrations, out of text. The drawings of the plants and their parts are very schematic but very faithful to reality. Over the comments, Stapelio takes the opportunity to illustrate in an almost encyclopedic way the various botanical species and their applications. His colleague, the humanist

Caspar Barlaeus Caspar Barlaeus (February 12, 1584 – January 14, 1648) was a Dutch polymath and Renaissance humanist, a theologian, poet, and historian. Life Born Caspar (Kaspar) van Baerle in Antwerp, Barlaeus' parents fled the city when it was occupied by Spa ...

, dedicated a poem to him in Latin.

Carl 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 ...

named, in his honor, the genus Stapelia of the family

Apocynaceae Apocynaceae (from ''Apocynum'', Greek for "dog-away") is a family of flowering plants that includes trees, shrubs, herbs, stem succulents, and vines, commonly known as the dogbane family, because some taxa were used as dog poison Members of the ...

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bodaeus van Stapel, Johannes 1602 births 1636 deaths 17th-century Dutch botanists Physicians from Amsterdam Scientists from Amsterdam Pre-Linnaean botanists