Auguste Jean Baptiste Chevalier facts for kids

Auguste Jean Baptiste Chevalier was a French botanist, and explorer of tropical Africa, especially of French Africa and Côte d'Ivoire.

Echium vulcanorum, a Capeverdean plant discovered and named by Chevalier.

Biography

Chevalier was born on 23 June 1873 in Domfront, a town in Orne, Lower Normandy, France. His family had a small farm in Normandy and he studied first in Domfront and then in Caen.

He finished high school in 1891 and began to study at Caen University and, in 1893, Élie Antoine Octave Lignier, botanist at the university, put him in charge of making the catalog of the university herbarium.

After his military service in 1894, he got his degree in natural sciences in 1896 and he began to work with the botanist Charles Eugene Bertrand at the University of Lille. In 1897, he got a scholarship, allowing him to enter the botanical laboratory of Philippe Van Tieghem at the National Museum of Natural History. From 1899 to 1900, he was part of a scientific travel to Sudan.

Chevalier got a doctorate in 1901 and then made many scientific travels, mainly to Africa but also to tropical Asia and to South America. He became an assistant in the Colonial Agriculture Laboratory of the École pratique des hautes études (an establishment of research and higher education); in 1907 he became the deputy director of the institution and then in 1912 was made director of it.

In 1921, he began publishing the journal Revue de Botanique Appliquée, in French, where he wrote many articles.

In 1929 he was made professor of crop production at the National Museum of Natural History of France; he remained here until his retirement in 146. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1937.

After his death in 1956, the Domfront municipality gave his name to the high school of the city in 1959.

See also

In Spanish: Auguste Jean Baptiste Chevalier para niños