1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Gaudichaud-Beaupré, Charles

GAUDICHAUD-BEAUPRÉ, CHARLES (1789–1854), French botanist, was born at Angoulême on the 4th of September 1789. He studied pharmacy first in the shop of a brother-in-law at Cognac, and then under P. J. Robiquet at Paris, where from R. L. Desfontaines and L. C. Richard he acquired a knowledge of botany. In April 1810 he was appointed dispenser in the military marine, and from July 1811 to the end of 1814 he served at Antwerp. In 1817 he joined the corvette “Uranie” as pharmaceutical botanist to the circumpolar expedition commanded by D. de Freycinet. The wreck of the vessel on the Falkland Isles, at the close of 1819, deprived him of more than half the botanical collections he had made in various parts of the world. In 1830–1833 he visited Chile, Peru and Brazil, and in 1836–1837 he acted as botanist to “La Bonite” during its circumnavigation of the globe. His theory accounting for the growth of plants by the supposed coalescence of elementary “phytons” involved him, during the latter years of his life, in much controversy with his fellow-botanists, more especially C. F. B. de Mirbel. He died in Paris on the 16th of January 1854.

Besides accounts of his voyages round the world, Gaudichaud-Beaupré wrote “Lettres sur l’organographie et la physiologie,” Arch. de botanique, ii., 1883; “Recherches générales sur l’organographie,” &c. (prize essay, 1835), Mém. de l’Académie des Sciences, t. viii. and kindred treatises, with memoirs on the potato-blight, the multiplication of bulbous plants, the increase in diameter of dicotyledonous plants, and other subjects; and Réfutation de toutes les objections contre les nouveaux principes physiologiques (1852).