André Thouin

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André Thouin (born February 10, 1747 in Paris , † October 27, 1824 in Paris) was a French botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Thouin ".

André Thouin. Engraving by Ambroise Tardieu (1788–1841), 1824

Life

family

He was the son of Jean-André Thouin (? -1764), the "Jardinier du Cabinet du Roi" (head gardener of the " Royal Garden ", the predecessor of the botanical garden Jardin des Plantes ) in Paris was. The horticultural artist Gabriel Thouin was his second youngest brother. All four brothers are buried in a grave in the 11th section of Père Lachaise .

education

When Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), the renowned botanist of his time and the founder of the first natural system of plant classification, André Thouin learned botany.

Chief gardener of the Cabinet Royal

When Thouin's father died, André was 17 years old. The naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon offered the inquisitive and gifted Thouin to continue his father's position as head of the Botanical Garden ("Jardinier en Chef du Cabinet Royal d'Histoire Naturelle"). Under Thouin's direction, the garden was significantly expanded.

Scientific activities

Thouin subsequently worked on the famous Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alembert and entered the French Academy of Sciences in 1786 (after the dissolution of the academies during the French Revolution, the Institut de France ). Together with Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet , Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton , Pierre Joseph Redouté , René Louiche Desfontaines , Antoine François de Fourcroy and Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier , he was one of the co-founders of the Parisian Linnaeus Society in 1787 . He was a member of several other scientific societies.

Career and Activities in the Young Republic

Thouin, one of the king's last gardeners, soon became one of the leading gardeners of the new republic:

He took an active part in the French Revolution that broke out and occupied various posts in its administration. For example, he sat in the city assembly of Paris at the side of Mirabeau , Sieyès , Talleyrand and Danton and was from 1789 to 1800 "Commissaire de la République".

Together with Fabre d'Églantine he developed the Republican Calendar . On October 25, 1793 (4th Brumaire of the year 1), the National Convention adopted the calendar in which the course of the year was determined by plants, fruits and flowers. However, the metric system of the revolutionary calendar was not able to establish itself in Europe and also in France in the long run, although such a division applies in many other areas.

With René Louiche Desfontaines (1750–1831), Thouin inventoried the now expropriated botanical gardens of the aristocracy and other former dignitaries in the Paris region. In 1793 he was brought to the chair of a professor of culture (agriculture, horticulture, fruit growing and silviculture) at the newly founded National Museum of Natural History . He held this position until his death in 1824. From 1814 to 1817 he was director of the museum. In 1794 (until the beginning of 1795) he followed the revolutionary armies to the Netherlands and Belgium , where, together with the geologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond (1741-1819), he was commissioned to systematically collect their plant collections from the expropriated aristocrats for the museum “ back ”. He received the same order from Napoléon Bonaparte during the Italian campaign in 1796 . For this purpose he traveled to Mantua, Padua, Parma and Florence, among others, in 1795 and 1796. Plants selected by Thouin were also brought to Paris from the French colonies overseas. Thouin was, of course, very well known to the most interesting collections thanks to his close contacts from the time of the monarchy with contemporary specialist colleagues at botanical gardens in other countries. It was also clear to him that if the valuable plant stocks were not transferred to the care of the Botanical Garden at the Paris Museum, these plants would be lost due to a lack of care by the previous gardeners of the aristocrats and to destruction. The botanical collections carried out by Thouin for the museum are in fact the only botanical collection in France that was not destroyed by the turmoil of the revolution. Without his work the Royal Garden and its many would plant hunters collected the king's plants and herbaria been destroyed in the revolutionary turmoil and not get as the famous Jardin des Plantes.

Thouin soon began to sell plants from there to the botanical gardens that were gradually emerging in the country. According to the will of the new government, each department should maintain a botanical center with a double task, educational and economic. In particular, crops should fulfill these functions - if only because of the prevailing famine, but also because of the deliberate upgrading of the peasant class. The ornamental plants, valued in the monarchy, initially faded into the background, but regained importance under Napoleon and especially his flower-loving wife Joséphine . Thouin introduced a large number of well-known plants, including the dahlia , to France during this period and acclimatized them to the museum. Thouin also exchanged plants and seeds with other botanists around the world, e.g. B. several times with Thomas Jefferson , the enlightened American politician and scientist.

Significance for German gardeners

The founder of the classic landscape garden in Germany, Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell , came into contact with Thouin while studying in France. After his return, Sckell exchanged letters with Thouin from 1781 to 1812 regarding the completion of the collections at the Botanical Garden in Munich, in which Sckell participated. (The letters are reproduced in transcription by: Iris Lauterbach (Ed.): Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750–1823) garden artist and city planner . Worms: Wernersche Verlagsanstalt, 2002). During his stay in France in 1811/12, the young Prussian horticultural artist Peter Joseph Lenné , in addition to his contacts with Gabriel Thouin, who had a strong influence on him, also gained in-depth knowledge of rare shrubs and exotic plants from André Thouin, which he then used in his gardens.

Forest scientific significance

Illustration from the monograph des greffes (on finishing techniques )

André Thouin's work is also of particular importance in the field of forest science. For example, he campaigned for the improvement of cultivation methods through seed selection and better techniques for grafting, and also researched the effects of light on plants.

Honors

André Thouin received the highest French order, Knight of the Legion of Honor . Cape Thouin on the north coast of Western Australia (40 km west of Port Hedland ) and, since October 2, 1865, a street in the 5th arrondissement of Paris are named after him. Also the genus Thouinia Poit. from the soap tree family (Sapindaceae) was dedicated to him. These plants, native to tropical Africa ( Thouinia dicarpa ), Mexico ( Thouinia descandra ) and Cuba ( Thouinia canescens ), keep its name in herbaria and botanical gardens all over the world. Also the plant genus Thyana Ham. also from the family of the soap plants (Sapindaceae), is named in his honor.

Fonts

Another illustration from the monograph des greffes
  • Description de l'École d'agriculture pratique du Muséum d'histoire naturelle (1814)
  • Manuel d'arboriculture. Manuel illustré de la culture, de la taille et de la greffe des arbres fruitiers
  • Monograph des greffes, ou Description technique des diverses sortes de greffes employées pour la multiplication des végétaux (1821)
  • Cours de culture et de naturalization des végétaux (1827)
  • Mémoire sur la culture des dahlias et sur leur usage dans l'ornement des jardins (1804)
  • Editor of Instruction pour les voyageurs et pour les employés dans les colonies sur la manière de recueillir, de conserver et d'envoyer les objets d'histoire naturelle, rédigée… par l'administration du Muséum royal d'histoire naturelle (one of the administration of the Natural History Museum written instructions for travelers and employees in the colonies about collecting and shipping natural history objects)
  • In a foreword written shortly before his death for the 1825 treatise Traité des arbrisseaux et des arbustes cultivés en France et en pleine terre by Jean-Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire (1772-1845) Thouin emphasized the need to preserve trees and replanting for France's over-exploited forest due to rapid population growth.

literature

  • Adrien Davy de Virville (Red.): Histoire de la botanique en France . Paris: SEDES, 1955
  • Yvonne Letouzey: Le Jardin des plantes à la croisée des chemins avec André Thouin, 1747-1824 . Muséum national d'histoire naturelle de Paris, 1989. ISBN 2-85653-174-1
  • ET Hamy: Les derniers jours du Jardin du Roi et la fondation du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in: Centenaire de la fondation du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, 10 June 1793–10 June 1893, Paris, 1893
  • A.-F. Sylvestre: Notice biographique sur M. André Thouin, professeur de culture au jardin du roi, membre de l'Institut de la Société Royale d'Agriculture et Centrale, etc . Paris: Madame Huzard, 1825
  • EC Spary: Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution , Chapter 2: Acting at a Distance: Andre Thouin and the Function of Botanical Networks . University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000, ISBN 0-226-76862-7 ( hardback ), ISBN 0-226-76863-5 (paperback)
  • LB Kury: André Thouin et la nature exotique au Jardin des Plantes . In: Jean-Louis Fischer (Org.) .: Le Jardin entre science et représentation . Paris: CTHS, 1999, v., P. 255-265.
  • LB Kury: André Thouin et la nature exotique au Jardin des Plantes . In: 120e Congrès National des Sociétés Historiques et Scientifiques, 1995. Resumés. Aix-en-Provence. p. 219.
  • MMG van Strien-Chardonneau: Voyages et lumieres: André Thouin en Belgique et en Hollande, 1794–1795 . In: Transactions of the ninth international congress on the enlightenment, Munster, 23-29 July 1995 . (Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 346-348, pp. 860-863). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996.
  • MMG van Strien-Chardonneau: La correspondance d'André Thouin (1747-1824) et de Martinus van Marum (1750-1837), 1796-1818 . In: Lias: Sources and Documents relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, 24, pp. 67-123, 1997.
  • Voyage dans la Belgique, la Hollande et l'Italie par feu André Thouin […] rédigé sur le journal autographe de ce savant professeur par le baron Trouvé, 2 delen . Paris: chez l'éditeur, 1841. In the book, published from Thouin's original travel notes, the following are described: Maastricht, Eindhoven, Vught, Den Bosch, Zaltbommel, Culemborg, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Hillegom, 's Gravenhage, Scheveningen, Delft, Rotterdam, Delfshaven, Muiden, Naarden, Soestdijk, Amersfoort, 't Loo, Zutphen, Dieren, Arnhem, Wageningen, Amerongen, Woerden, Alphen ad Rijn, Leiden, Purmerend, Monnickendam, Broek, Gorinchem and Breda.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thouin, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French botanist
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1747
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1824
Place of death Paris