Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1 February 1761 – 16 November 1836) was a German

mycologist Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans, including as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, as w ...

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. A ...

Early life

Persoon was born in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

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 Pomeranian 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 ...

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 practice ...

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 with ...

and

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The or ...

. 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 mo ...

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 on ...

, 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 ins ...

. 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 polypo ...

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 royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for prom ...

. 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 leav ...

'', 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 saints ...

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, c ...

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 Entertainme ...

Fungal Biodiversity Centre.

References

* Duane Isely, ''One hundred and one botanists'' (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 124–126.

External links