Gaspard Bauhin

Gaspard Bauhin, also written Caspar Bauhin, who lived from 1560 to 1624, was a Swiss botanist whose Pinax theatri botanici of 1623 described some 6,000 plants and classified them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus. Born in Basel to a French surgeon who had left France on becoming a Protestant, he studied in Basel, Padua, Bologna, Montpellier, Paris and Tubingen, took his medical doctorate at the University of Basel in 1581 and was appointed to the chair of anatomy and botany in 1589. He was a disciple of the Italian physician Girolamo Mercuriale and also worked on human anatomical nomenclature, describing the ileocecal valve in 1588, which is called Bauhin's valve. His herbarium of more than 4,000 species was one of the most extensive of its time, and he trained a generation of botanists. Linnaeus honoured Gaspard and his brother Jean in the genus name Bauhinia.