Caspar Bauhin’s life (1560–1624) – Academic career, achievements as a botanist and his herbarium

Abstract

Caspar Bauhin was born 1560 in Basel as a refugee child from a distinguished Protestant family which escaped persecution of the Huguenots in France. He studied medicine and botany at the University in Basel, in Italy and France and became the first professor for medical Anatomy and Botany in Basel. He is the founder of one of the first Botanical Gardens north of the Alps, and the first to offer regularly botanical excursions and courses in systematics and taxonomy for medical students. In his many publications, C. Bauhin aimed to give a systematic overview of all c. 5600 plant species known at the time, based on meticulous comparison and descriptions by himself, renaming them by distinguishing clearly between genus and species and by adding the synonyms of other authors. Thereby Caspar Bauhin was paving the way for botany as an independent scientific discipline and for Linnaeus, who heavily relied on him for the further development of botanical systematics and nomenclature more than a century later. His herbarium, which today is kept at the University of Basel, served him as working tool and included more than 4000 species, which he collected himself or through exchange with a wide net of correspondents. Not the least of Bauhin’s achievements is the publication in 1622 of one of the first comprehensive local floras, which until today is used as a reference for floristic changes in the surroundings of Basel.