Philippe Édouard Léon Van Tieghem (French pronunciation:[filipedwaʁleɔ̃vantiɡɛm]; 19 April 1839 – 28 April 1914) was a Frenchbotanist born inBaillleul in thedépartement ofNord.[1] He was one of the best known French botanists of the latter nineteenth century.[2]The standardauthor abbreviationTiegh. is used to indicate this person as the author whenciting abotanical name.[3]
Van Tieghem's father was a textile merchant who died ofyellow fever inMartinique before he was born, and his mother shortly thereafter.[4] One of five children, he obtained hisbaccalauréat in 1856, and continued his studies at theÉcole Normale Supérieure, where after receivingagrégation, he worked in the laboratory ofLouis Pasteur (1822–1895). Here he performed research involving the cultivation ofmushrooms. He is credited with creation of the eponymous "Van Tieghem cell", a device mounted on a microscope slide that allows for observing the development of a fungus'mycelium.
In 1864 he earned his doctorate inphysical sciences with a thesis titledRecherches sur la fermentation de l'urée et de l'acide hippurique, and two years later obtained a doctorate innatural history. From 1873 to 1886, he taught classes at theÉcole centrale des arts et manufactures, and from 1878 to 1914, was a professor at theMuséum national d'histoire naturelle. Within this time period (1899–1914), he was also an instructor at theInstitut agronomique in Paris. Van Tieghem became a member of theSociété philomathique de Paris in 1871. In 1874 he translated the third edition ofJulius von Sachs'Lehrbuch der Botanik textbook (1873) from German into French asTraité de botanique conforme à l'état présent de la science.[1] Van Tieghem's ownTraité de botanique appeared in 1884, in which he outlined his schema fortaxonomic classification. He was the first, in 1876, to describeblastomycosis, a fungal infection that is also known as "Gilchrist disease", named after Thomas Casper Gilchrist (1862–1927), who published a treatise on the condition in 1896.[5] He gained membership to theAcadémie des sciences, also in 1876.[1] Van Tieghem wrote extensively on themistletoe family ofLoranthaceae, with much of his taxonomic work surviving to the present day.[6][7][8][9] He died in Paris in 1914.[1]
He has been honoured in the naming of several plant taxa;[10] In 1890, botanist Pierre publishedTieghemella a genus in the familySapotaceae.[11]Then in 1959,R.K.Benj. published a genus of fungi asTieghemiomyces (in the familyDimargaritaceae).[12]
In 1909 he was named a Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur in recognition of his contributions to botany.[13]
Van Tieghem's primary grouping was intoembranchements (branches), followed bysous-embranchement (sub-branches), classes, orders, families, genera, species and varieties.
His four branches (1st edition) were, as follows, with the Phanerogames divided into two sub-branches. The angiosperms contain twoclasses, Monocotyledonés and Dicotyledonés;
He further divided theMonocotyledonés into fourorders (ordres), based just on the presence or absence of aperianth and the position of theovary, which in turn were divided intofamilies (familles);[15][16]* Monocotyledonés,
TheLiliinées order contained five families;
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