Brongniart's Histoire des vegetaux fossiles

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Taxon.Adolphe-Theodore Brongniart was born on 14 January 1801 and might have regarded himself with some justice as one of the first children of the nineteenth century. This may even be taken as an omen: Brongniart's life history embodies much of the best of that century. His scientific career started when the social, technical and scientific development of Europe was in full swing, and it ended shortly after the deep disenchantment brought about by the catastrophic war of 1870-1871. Brongniart was born under a lucky star in several other respects as well: his family was well-to-do and had a strong and active scientific and artistic tradition. His early education left nothing to be desired in the agreeable region of Sevres. where his father, the great palaeontologist Alexandre Brongniart, was in charge of 'the industry'. One of his biographers, Louis de Launay (1940), remarks that "La vie d'Adolphe Brongniart s'est 6coulee sans le moindre incident, dans le calme du laboratoire et de la vie de famille... N6 et nourri dans le serail, eleve au milieu des mineraux et des plantes, initi6 des ses premiers ans aux sciences naturelles, ayant toujours gravite dans le cercle etroit du Museum, de l'Universite, de l'lcole des Mines, ayant de plus, ce qui est l'essentiel, recu par heridite le genie d'observation methodique, Adolphe Brongniart 6tait pr6destin6e faire une belle carriere de naturaliste." Even so, without that indefinable but indispensable spark of genius, combined with an innate curiosity, it would have been impossible for Adolphe to become the great and many-sided scientist who was to be an undisputed leader in several botanical disciplines.It is not necessary here to trace Brongniart's life history and to enumerate his many merits; this has been done eloquently, though fairly and objectively, by his two principal biographers Saporta (1878) and de Launay (1940). Adolphe's life went undoubtedly before the wind: a peaceful Europe, an unprecedented expansion of technology, sympathetic and tradition-conscious surroundings, a name with status; but he also had a logical and methodical mind, with a great leaning towards recognition of fundamental principles, completely free from the irrational myths of the past. In many ways Brongniart was therefore a typical child of the best of the French revolution.Brongniart's many achievements in botany were in physiology, anatomy, pure taxonomy and palaeobotany. The publication of a handsome facsimile edition of his main palaeobotanical work by Messrs Asher en Co, Amsterdam *, focuses attention again on the fundamental import...

The curious case of Karl Nagalhard and the central European influence on the early studies on the Cenozoic paleobotany in Turkey

“…However, there were other illustrious paleobotanists like Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (1801-1876), who was often regarded as the father of paleobotany (e.g., Stafleu, 1966). Both Unger and Brongniart collaborated with de Tchihatcheff in his Anatolian researches.…”

Nomenclatural Status of the Palaeobotanical “Artificial Taxa” Established in Brongniart’S 1822 “Classification” Paper

“…fossils that could not be assigned to the families and genera of modern-day plants (Stafleu 1966). This problem partly arose, we now know, because many plant fossils are the remains of long-extinct groups that, even if we had the whole living organisms, could not be assigned to modernday families and genera.…”

Synopsis of Proposals on Botanical Nomenclature Leningrad 1975

“…Realizing that the organs of a plant are usually unassociated, he introduced an independent nomenclature for different plant organs, even though they may have come from the same plant originally. His views and their impact on paleobotany have been thoroughly analyzed by Stafleu (1966Stafleu ( , 1967see also Faegri, 1963). Recognition of organgenera, form-genera, and their introduction into the Botanical Code logically capped Brongniart's contributions to paleobotany.…”