Alphonse de Candolle (1806 93) was a French-Swiss botanist who was an important figure in the study of the origins of plants and the reasons for their geographic distribution. He also created the first Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Despite initially studying law, he took over both the chair of botany at the University of Geneva, and the directorship of Geneva's botanical gardens from his father Augustin de Candolle (1778 1841). He published numerous botanical books, and edited ten volumes of the Prodromus, a seventeen-volume reference text intended to cover the key properties of all known...