Johann Bauhin

Johann Bauhin (1541 to 1613) was a Swiss botanist born in Basel, the son of the physician Jean Bauhin and brother of the physician and botanist Gaspard Bauhin. He studied botany at the University of Tübingen under Leonhart Fuchs, travelled with Conrad Gessner, and began a medical practice in Basel, where he was elected professor of rhetoric in 1566. Four years later he became physician to Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg, at Montbéliard in Franche-Comté, where he stayed until his death. He devoted himself chiefly to botany, nurtured several botanic gardens and collected plants on his travels. In 1591 he published a list of plants named after saints. His great work, the Historia plantarum universalis, a compilation of all that was then known about botany, was left incomplete at his death and published at Yverdon in 1650 and 1651. Linnaeus named the genus Bauhinia for the brothers Johann and Gaspard.