Michel Adanson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Michel Adanson
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Michel Adanson
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| Born | 7 April 1727 |
| Died | 3 August 1806 (aged 79) |
| Nationality | French |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Naturalist |
| Institutions | Jardin des Plantes |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Adans. |
Michel Adanson (born April 7, 1727 – died August 3, 1806) was a French scientist. He lived in the 1700s and studied plants and animals. He traveled to Senegal in Africa to learn about its nature. Adanson also created his own way to group living things, different from the famous scientist Carl Linnaeus.
Contents
Michel Adanson's Early Life and Studies
Michel Adanson was born in Aix-en-Provence, France. His family moved to Paris in 1730 when he was very young. He studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
After school, he worked in important science collections. These included the collections of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and Bernard de Jussieu. He also worked at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. From 1741 to 1746, he attended lectures there. He also went to lectures at the Collège de France.
Adanson's Journey to Senegal
In 1748, Adanson got money from the French East India Company. He used it to go on an exciting trip to Senegal in Africa. He stayed there for five years.
During his time in Senegal, he collected and described many animals and plants. He also gathered samples of things people traded. He drew maps of the country. Adanson even made notes on the weather and stars. He also wrote down words and grammar for the languages spoken near the Sénégal River.
Adanson's Classification System
After returning to Paris in 1754, Adanson used some of his notes. He wrote a book called Histoire naturelle du Senegal (Natural History of Senegal) in 1757. This book was special because it included an essay about shells.
In this essay, Adanson shared his own way of classifying living things. It was different from the systems used by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Carl Linnaeus. Adanson believed that every part of an organism was important for classification. He thought that living things with the most similar parts should be grouped together. The more different their parts were, the further apart they should be in his system.
Familles naturelles des plantes
In 1763, Adanson published another important book. It was called Familles naturelles des plantes (Natural Families of Plants). In this book, he further explained his classification ideas. His system focused on natural relationships between plants. It was similar to ideas from Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and John Ray.
In 1774, Adanson showed a huge project to the French Academy of Sciences. It was about all known living things and substances. This work had 27 large handwritten volumes. It showed how everything was related and organized. There were also 150 more volumes. These contained alphabetical lists of 40,000 species. He also had a dictionary with 200,000 words. Plus, there were 40,000 drawings and 30,000 samples of nature.
The Academy suggested he publish only his own new ideas. They thought he should leave out the parts that were just copied. But Adanson did not agree. He kept working on this huge project, but it was never published.
Adanson's Ideas on Change in Nature
Adanson was one of the first scientists to talk about how living things change over time. He believed that traits an animal gained during its life could be passed on. This idea is called the inheritance of acquired characters.
Historian Conway Zirkle noted that Adanson was a teacher before Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck likely knew Adanson's work. Adanson wrote about changes in species in his 1763 book. He even suggested that changes happened through traits passed down.
In 1769, Adanson used the word "mutations." He used it to describe small changes that could lead to new types of individuals. Even though he is seen as a "precursor of evolutionism," Adanson did not believe in species changing into completely new ones. He preferred to study individual organisms.
Adanson also tried to classify fungi based on their complex structures. He was the first botanist to group lichens with fungi.
Later Life and Legacy
Adanson became a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1759. He later received a small payment from them. However, the Academy was closed in 1793. This left Adanson in great poverty. He was so poor he could not even afford proper clothes.
Later, he was given enough money to live simply. He died in Paris after a long illness. He asked for a simple decoration on his grave. It was a garland of flowers from the 58 plant families he had identified. Georges Cuvier said this was a "touching image" of his lasting work.
Besides his books, Adanson wrote about other topics. He studied the ship-worm and the baobab tree. The baobab tree's scientific name, Adansonia, is named after him. He also wrote about how different types of cultivated plants came to be. He studied trees that produce gum.
Adanson's notes and plant collections stayed with his family for over 150 years. In the 1960s, they were given to the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. This institute is at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The Hunt Institute later republished his Familles des plantes.
A type of turtle, Pelusios adansonii, is named in his honor.
Adanson in Literature
Michel Adanson is mentioned in two novels by Patrick O'Brian. These are The Reverse of the Medal and The Commodore. In these books, a character named Stephen Maturin talks about Adanson. He describes Adanson's work in Senegal. He also mentions Adanson's many writings and his poverty.
Stephen Maturin admired Adanson greatly. He learned much about African plants and animals from Adanson's book. He also spoke of Adanson's huge, unpublished work. This work included many volumes, drawings, and specimens. Maturin believed Adanson was happy working on his great project. He also noted that other scientists like Antoine Laurent de Jussieu admired him.
A novel by David Diop (novelist), La porte du voyage sans retour, was inspired by Adanson's experiences in Senegal.
See also
In Spanish: Michel Adanson para niños
- Arboretum de Balaine
- Adanson system
- Category: Taxa named by Michel Adanson
