Pierre-Marie Alexis Millardet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pierre-Marie Alexis Millardet (born December 13, 1838 in Montmirey-la-Ville , Jura department , † December 15, 1902 in Bordeaux ) was a French medic and botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Millardet ".

Live and act

Statue of Alexis Millardet by Gaston Veuvenot Leroux, in the public garden of Bordeaux.

Millardet first attended the Collège de l'Arc in Dole , and later in Besançon . He then studied medicine and natural sciences at the Universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg . He then returned to France and in 1868 became professor of botany at the Université de Strasbourg . In 1870 he moved to the Université de Nancy .

In 1874 he was appointed to a committee commissioned by the French state to clarify the causes of phylloxera disease in the vines and how to combat them. Millardet had proposed for the first time that European vines should be grafted onto bases made from American vines in order to disrupt the generation change of phylloxera.

In 1876 Millardet received a call to the chair of botany at the University of Bordeaux . There he dealt with the breeding of hybrid vines and also created some new underlay vines.

By chance he discovered the Bordelaise pulp as a remedy against downy mildew , a fungal disease that had been introduced from America and had led to devastating losses in some European wine-growing regions. Millardet had noticed that the vines in one vineyard were infected with the disease, but not in the neighboring vineyard - with the grapes from those healthy vines being covered with a light blue layer. He asked the winemaker and he said that he sprayed the grapes with a mixture of milk of lime and copper sulphate . Millardet developed this recipe further together with his chemistry colleague Ulysse Gayon .

To commemorate this discovery, a bronze bust was erected in Bordeaux in 1902, created by Gaston Veuvenot Leroux. In 1888 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .

Fonts

  • Histoire des principales variétés et espèces de vignes d'origine américaine qui résistent au phylloxera . Paris, Masson; Bordeaux, Féret; Milan, Hoepli, 1885.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter M. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 23, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Millardet, Pierre-Marie Alexis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French medic and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Montmirey-la-Ville , Jura department
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1902
Place of death Bordeaux