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' mushroom taxonomy.

Early life

Persoon was born in South Africa 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 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 at

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...

, at age 22 (in 1784) Persoon switched to medicine at Leiden and Göttingen. He received a doctorate from the "Kaiserlich-Leopoldinisch-Carolinische Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher" in 1799.

Later years

He moved to Paris 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, 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 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, and the Gasteromycetes. Persoon described many polypore 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 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'', a variety of small Australian trees and shrubs, was named after him. The title ''Persoonia'' is also given to a biannual scientific journal of molecular phylogeny and evolution of fungi, published jointly by the National Herbarium of the Netherlands and the CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre.

References

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

External links