Sébastien Vaillant

Sébastien Vaillant.

Title page from Botanicon Parisiense (1727).

Sébastien Vaillant (born May 26, 1669 in Vigny , Val-d'Oise , † May 26, 1722 in Paris ) was a French botanist . He "initiated the reform of botany". Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Vaill. "

Live and act

Sébastien Vaillant was the eldest son of the merchant Denys Vaillant and his wife Marguerite Pinson. He became interested in botany at an early age and was already growing a number of wild plants in his father's garden at the age of six . His father did not like this tendency. He turned his son's interest to music. His progress in learning to play the organ was so great that at the age of eleven he succeeded his deceased teacher at the Benedictine monastery of St. Maclaud in Pontoise . Later he was an organist in a nearby nunnery.

Vaillant later showed an interest in medicine. He studied medical books and regularly attended the hospital in Pontoise, where he was soon employed as an assistant doctor. In 1688 he went to Évreux to study medicine. Here he met the Margrave of Goville, who was the captain of a fusilier regiment of the king and employed him as a doctor for his regiment. As a result, Vaillant took part in the Battle of Fleurus in 1690 .

In 1691 he went to Paris and became a doctor at the Hôtel-Dieu . In 1692 he settled in Neuilly as a doctor. From here he attended the Wednesday botanical lectures that Joseph Pitton de Tournefort gave at the Jardin du Roi every week . With Tournefort he also went on several botanical excursions.

He made the acquaintance of Guy-Crescent Fagon , who soon employed him as his personal secretary. This position allowed Vaillant to continue excursions (for example, together with Antoine-Tristan Danty d'Isnard along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany ) and to hold botanical lectures at the Jardin du Roi. In 1699 Vaillant was given the post of administrator of the Cabinet des drogues at the Jardin du Roi. In 1702 he received his first official position as a botanist on the recommendation of Fagon. Six years later, again at the suggestion of Fagon, he became “sub-demonstrator of the garden”.

On January 18, 1716, the Académie des Sciences elected him to their member and in 1717 he replaced Antoine de Jussieu as professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi.

Vaillant 1718 magazine published Sermo de Structura Florum the sexuality of plants suggested Carolus Linnaeus in to take a closer with the function of stamen and pistil (the from the ovary , style and stigma existing part of the flower to deal). Between 1718 and 1721 he held several lectures in front of the academy on the genus of the composites and their species, as well as a lecture that dealt critically with Tournefort's plant systematics.

Vaillant prepared an extensive work on the plants of the Paris area. The draftsman Claude Aubriet , who worked at the Jardin du Roi, made over 300 drawings for this. When Vaillant realized that he could no longer finish the manuscript, he sent it to Herman Boerhaave . He published the work posthumously in 1727 under the title Botanicon Parisiense .

After Vaillant's death, his widow sold his herbarium of over 9,000 species to the king. It forms the basis of today's herbarium of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris.

Honor taxon

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort named in his honor the genre Valantia (also Vaillantia ) of the plant family of the redness plants (Rubiaceae). Carl von Linné later took over this name.

Fonts (selection)

• Discours sur la structure des fleurs: leurs différences et l'usage de leurs parties prononcé à l'ouverture du jardin royal de Paris, le Xe jour du mois de juin 1717 et l'établissement des trois nouveaux genres de plantes, l'araliastrum, la sheradia, la boerhaavia avec la description de nouvelles plantes rapportées au dernier genre . Leiden, 1718.
• Etablissement de nouveaux caracteres de trois familles or classes de plantes à fleurs composées; scavoir, des Cynarocephales, des Corymbiferes et des Cichoracees . Paris 1718-1721.
• Caracteres de quatorze genres de plantes: le dénombrement de leurs espéces; les descriptions de quelques-unes, & les figures de plusieurs . Paris, 1719.
• Suite de l'eclaircissement de nouveaux caracteres de plantes . Paris, 1721.
• Remarques on the method of M. Tournefort . Paris, 1722.
• Botanicon :
  • Botanicon Parisiense: Operis majoris prodituri prodromus in the Google book search, Leiden 1723.
  • Botanicon Parisiense ou, Denombrement par ordre alphabetique des plantes, qui se trouvent aux environs de Paris: avec plusieurs descriptions des plantes, leurs synonymes, le Tems de fleurir & de grainer et une critique des auteurs de botanique par Sebastien Vaillant; enrichi de plus de trois cents figures, dessinées par le sieur Claude Aubriet in the google book search. Leiden, 1727.

proof

literature

• Paul Albert Jovet, James Mallet: Vaillant, Sébastien . In: Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography . Volume 13, Charles Scribner's Sons, Detroit 2008, pp. 553-554 (online) .
• Ferdinand Höfer : Nouvelle biography générale: depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours, avec les renseignements bibliographiques et l'indication des sources à consulter . Paris: Firmin Didot, 1852–1866. - 46 volumes
• Charles Knight: Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge By Charles Knight . Volume 26, Ung-Wal, 1843
• Jean Pierre Nicéron: Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres: avec un catalog raisonné de leurs ouvrages . Paris: Briasson, 1729-1745. - 43 volumes

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl von Linné: Philosophy botanique de Charles Linné… dans laquelle sont expliqués les fondements de la botanique, avec les définitions de ses parties, les examples des termes, des observations sur les plus rares in the Google book search Paris 1788, p. 182
2. ↑ List of membres, correspondants et associés étrangers de l'Académie des sciences depuis sa création en 1666 ( Memento of the original of April 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, accessed on May 14, 2012; 70 kB).
3. ↑ Georges Cremers, Cécile Aupic: Spécimens de Charles Plumier déposés à Paris dans les collections de ptéridophytes américains de Tournefort, Vaillant, Danty d'Isnard et Jussieu . In: Adansonia . Volume 29, number 2, 2007, pp. 159–193 (PDF; 6.8 MB)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
4. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica Leiden 1737, p. 94
5. ↑ Carl von Linné: Species Plantarum . Leiden 1753, p. 1051
6. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . 5th edition, Leiden 1754
7. ↑ Claude Aubriet , botanist and nature painter.

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Sébastien Vaillant at the IPNI
• Manuscripts by Sébastien Vaillant (French)