Biographical note
Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1761–1836) is generally regarded as the father of systematic mycology. Persoon was born at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, to Christian Daniel Persoon and Elizabeth Wilhelmina Groenwald, a Dutch farmer’s daughter, who died a few weeks after his birth. Christiaan and his sisters became charges of the Orphan Official Institute in Cape Town. Persoon was sent to Europe to be educated in 1775; his father died a year later, and Persoon never returned to the Cape of Good Hope. He studied theology at Halle beginning around 1783, was studying medicine at Leiden in 1786, and then moved on to Göttingen for botanical research, ultimately earning a doctorate from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Erlangen in 1799. In 1803 he settled into a reclusive life in Paris, where he corresponded with botanists around the world from his sixth-floor room. Amazingly, Persoon never held an official appointment; after a poverty-stricken life devoted to fungi, he did manage to negotiate a government pension in exchange for his herbarium. In 1830 Persoon’s herbarium was taken to Brussels, and following the Belgian uprising of that year, it was taken from there to Leiden. In 1834 Persoon proposed to donate his library and his newly acquired collections to the King of the Netherlands. This offer was accepted, and when Persoon died at Paris in 1836, his library, manuscripts and dried plants were added to his collections already present in Leiden. In 1959, the Rijksherbarium in Leiden named its mycological journal Persoonia in his honor.

Persoon’s chief rival was the younger Elias Magnus Fries (1794–1878): “Almost simultaneously Fries and Persoon each started on the publication of a large compilation of mycology. But the work of Fries, the new, young genius on the scene, was soon to win out from that of the much older man, who was finding it more difficult to hold his own and who finally abandoned its completion.…In the philosophical background of the two mycologists, however, there was a subtle difference that was sensed by a few French mycologists, who took to calling themselves the bearers of the ‘Persoonian tradition.’ The first of these was Persoon’s diligent correspondent [Jean Baptists] Mougeot [1776–1858], and it is significant that in the part of France where Mougeot lived, a phenomenal group of famous mycologists evolved and flourished. Mougeot handed the torch to [Lucien] Quélet [1832–1899], [Jean Louis Emile] Boudier [1828–1920], and [Narcisse Théophile] Patouillard [1854–1926]; and it is this school who introduced an entirely new taxonomy for fungi and who gradually outdistanced the Friesian tradition, finally thrusting it aside.” (Hugo 1966, p.15).

Compiled from:
Barnhart, John Hendley. 1934. Botanical correspondents of Schweinitz. Bartonia 16:19–36.
Gunn, Mary and L. E. Codd. 1981. Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa. Cape Town: Published for the Botanical Research Institute by A. A. Balkema.
Hugo, C. E. 1966. Christiaan Hendrik Persoon: His grave now restored. J. Bot. Soc. South Africa 52: 12–16.
Hugo, C. E. 1965. The restoration of the grave of Christiaan Hendrick Persoon—“Prince of Mycologists.” J. Bot. Soc. South Africa 51: 37–40.
Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. 2006. Herbarium Persoon. In: Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. 2002. Collection Database. http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/virtual/content.htm
Ramsbottom, J. 1933–1934. C. H. Persoon and James E. Smith. Proc. Linn. Soc. London 146: 10–21.
For more biographical sources, contact the Archivist.


Content note
This collection consists of photocopies and microfilm: seven pamphlet files, three reels of microfilm, and one oversized plant list. Original documents are at the University Library, Leiden University.

Other resources
Individual portraits of this subject are available from the Hunt Institute portrait collection. Thumbnails of the individual portrait holdings are available as a PDF for research purposes. For publication-quality images, contact the Archivist to place an order.

Biographical citations for this subject are available from the Hunt Institute biographical collection as a PDF.