Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Montpellier, Occitania, France
About Antoine Gouan
- Antoine Gouan (15 November 1733 – 1 September 1821) was a French naturalist who was a native of Montpellier.
- Gouan was a pioneer of Linnaean taxonomy in France. He began his studies in Toulouse, later returning to Montpellier, where he studied medicine at the university.
- Here he was a student of François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix (1706–1767), an ardent supporter of Carl Linnaeus.
- In August 1752, Gouan received his doctorate under the chairmanship of Antoine Magnol (1676–1759), and subsequently practiced medicine at Saint-Éloi Hospital in Montpellier.
- Soon afterwards his interest turned to natural history. In 1762 Gouan published a plant catalog of the botanical garden at Montpellier titled Hortus regius monspeliensis.
- This publication was the first French botanical work that followed the binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus.
- In 1765 he penned Flora Monspeliaca, and became titulaire at the Montpellier Academy.
- During this time period he attained a position at the botanical garden, and was in charge of collection and classification of plant species.
- In 1770 he published an important ichthyological treatise called Historia Piscicum, a work that expanded the number of fish genera that existed in the Linnaean system. In 1766 he succeeded Sauvages de Lacroix at the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1783 became a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London.
- During his career he maintained correspondence with several learned scientists and thinkers, which included in addition to Linnaeus; Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), Jean Guillaume Bruguière (1750–1798), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), et al. In 1790, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
- Gouan is credited with planting the first ginkgo biloba in France, a tree that was given to him by naturalist Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761–1807).
- Today this tree is reportedly still standing in the botanical garden of Montpellier.
- During his career he amassed a large collection of algae that was harvested around Marseille. Taxa with the specific epithet of gouanii commemorate his name, an example being Ranunculus gouanii (Gouan's Buttercup).
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See Also
- Famous People's Birthdays on 15 November, France
- Famous People's Birthdays in November, France
- Famous botanist's Birthdays on 15 November, France
- Famous botanist's Birthdays in November, France
- Famous ichthyologist's Birthdays on 15 November, France
- Famous ichthyologist's Birthdays in November, France