Bauhin, Gaspard
BAUHIN, GASPARD (1560-1624), Swiss botanist and anatomist, was the son of a French physician, Jean Bauhin (1511-1582), who had to leave his native country on becoming a convert to Protestantism. He was born at Basel on the 17th of January 1560, and devoting himself to medicine, he pursued his studies at Padua, Montpellier, and some of the celebrated schools in Germany. Returning to Basel in 1580, he was admitted to the degree of doctor, and gave private lectures in botany and anatomy. In 1582 he was appointed to the Greek professorship in that university, and in 1588 to the chair of anatomy and botany. He was afterwards made city physician, professor of the practice of medicine, rector of the university, and dean of his faculty. He died at Basel on the 5th of December 1624. He published several works relative to botany, of which the most valuable was his Pinax Theatri Botanici, seu Index in Theophrasti, Dioscoridis, Plinii, et botanicorum qui a seculo scripserunt opera (1596). Another great work which he planned was a Theatrum Botanicum, meant to be comprised in twelve parts folio, of which he finished three; only one, however, was published (1658). He also gave a copious catalogue of the plants growing in the environs of Basel, and edited the works of P.A. Mattioli (1500-1577) with considerable additions. He likewise wrote on anatomy, his principal work on this subject being Theatrum Anatomicum infinitis locis auctum (1592).
His son, Jean Gaspard Bauhin (1606-1685), was professor of botany at Basel for thirty years. His elder brother, Jean Bauhin (1541-1613), after studying botany at Tübingen under Leonard Fuchs (1501-1566), and travelling with Conrad Gesner, began to practise medicine at Basel, where he was elected professor of rhetoric in 1766. Four years later he was invited to become physician to the duke of Württemberg at Montbéliard, where he remained till his death in 1613. He devoted himself chiefly to botany. His great work, Historia plantarum nova et absolutissima, a compilation of all that was then known about botany, was not complete at his death, but was published at Yverdon in 1650-1651, the Prodromus having appeared at the same place in 1619. He also wrote a book De aquis medicatis (1605).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
