de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame

de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame (də käNdōl`), 1778–1841, Swiss botanist. Considered the most important Swiss botanist of his era, de Candolle wrote on a wide variety of botanical topics, from medical botany to philosophical treatises on plant morphology and systematics. He spent most of his career at the botanical garden in Geneva, where he developed a system of plant classification that became the foundation for the method used today. The last 25 years of his life were spent on a monumental work, Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis, in which he proposed to classify and describe every seed plant species. He completed the first seven volumes, and the last ten volumes were completed by specialists and edited by his son, Alphonse de Candolle. He also produced monographs of 100 plant families.