Augustin Pyramus de Candolle

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle
Portrait by Joseph Hornung, 1839
Born	(1778-02-04)4 February 1778 Geneva, Republic of Geneva
Died	9 September 1841(1841-09-09) (aged 63) Geneva, Switzerland
Other names	Augustin Pyrame de Candolle
Education	Collège de Genève
Known for	System of Taxonomy, Principle of "Nature's War"
Relatives	Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle (son); Casimir de Candolle (grandson); Richard Émile Augustin de Candolle (great-grandson)
Awards	Royal Medal (1833); associate member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Scientific career
Fields	Botany, agronomy, phytogeography, chronobiology
Institutions	University of Montpellier, Collège de Genève
Patrons	Georges Cuvier
Author abbrev. (botany)	DC.

Augustin Pyramus (or Pyrame) de Candolle (UK: /kænˈdɒl/, US: /kɒ̃ˈdɔːl/, French: [kɑ̃dɔl]; 4 February 1778 – 9 September 1841) was a Swiss botanist. René Louiche Desfontaines launched de Candolle's botanical career by recommending him at a herbarium. Within a couple of years de Candolle had established a new genus, and he went on to document hundreds of plant families and create a new natural plant classification system. Although de Candolle's main focus was botany, he also contributed to related fields such as phytogeography, agronomy, paleontology, medical botany, and economic botany.

De Candolle originated the idea of "Nature's war", which influenced Charles Darwin and the principle of natural selection.^[1] De Candolle recognized that multiple species may develop similar characteristics that did not appear in a common evolutionary ancestor; a phenomenon now known as convergent evolution. During his work with plants, de Candolle noticed that plant leaf movements follow a near-24-hour cycle in constant light, suggesting that an internal biological clock exists. Though many scientists doubted de Candolle's findings, experiments over a century later demonstrated that "the internal biological clock" indeed exists.

De Candolle's descendants continued his work on plant classification; son Alphonse and grandson Casimir de Candolle contributed to the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis, a catalog of plants begun by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle.