Adanson, Michel

Adanson, Michel

(born April 7, 1727, Aix-en-Provence, France—died Aug. 3, 1806, Paris) French botanist. He studied theology, classics, and philosophy in Paris before traveling to Senegal, where he lived several years. He returned with a large collection of plant specimens, now in the National Museum of Natural History. In Families of Plants (1763), he described his classification system; it was opposed by Carolus Linnaeus, whose system eventually prevailed. He was the first to classify mollusks. He also studied electricity in torpedo fish and the effects of electrical current on regenerating frog legs and heads. He is now known mainly for introducing the use of statistical methods in botanical studies.

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Adanson, Michel 

Born Apr. 7, 1727; died Aug. 3, 1806. French botanist. Member of the French Academy of Sciences (1759).

Adanson was one of the founders of the natural system of plant classification, a variant of which he propounded in Families of Plants. In his search for the logical foundations of classification, he drew up 65 artificial systems, each one of which was based on a particular characteristic; comparing these systems, Adanson gauged the degree of proximity between related groups of plants, or taxons, thus becoming one of the pioneers in the application of mathematical methods to biology. Adanson believed in the possibility of transforming species. After 1772 he became infatuated with philosophy and with the Utopian idea of a single-handed compilation of a multivolume universal encyclopedia.

REFERENCE

Adanson. The Bicentennial of Michel Adanson’s “Families des plantes,” parts 1–2. Pittsburgh, 1963.