'') is listed, described and provided with synonyms and references. Bauhin already used
binomial names but did not consistently give all species throughout the work binomials. Jean and Gaspard were the sons of
Jean Bauhin (1511–1582), a French
surgeon to the King who had to leave his native country on becoming a convert to
Protestantism. Gaspard was born in
Basel. From 1572 he studied in his hometown,
Padua,
Bologna,
Montpellier,
Paris and
Tübingen. He was awarded his
medical doctorate at the
University of Basel in 1581 and started giving private lectures in
botany and
anatomy. In 1582 he was appointed to the
Greek professorship at the same university, as well as in 1589 to the new established chair of anatomy and botany. After the death of
Felix Platter in 1614, Bauhin was made professor of the practice of medicine and
city physician (). He was rector of the
University of Basel in 1592, then again in 1611 and 1619; during the second rectorate the university tried in vain to win back from the city council the freedoms of 1460, which were lost in 1532. As a impressive example of how independent scientific disciplines as
botany were established at early modern universities, Bauhin systematically trained a whole generation of scholars to become qualified botanists, while the
University of Basel became the undisputed center of the science in the German-speaking world around 1600. With regard to empirical research, Bauhin’s
herbarium was with more than 4,000 species one of the most extensive of its time. Its scientific layout and design corresponded to Bauhin's plan of a 'general history' (or catalogue) of all existing plants. To further his career, young Bauhin built up a large network of correspondents. These connections also allowed him to collect foreign and exotic botanical samples. With more than 2,500 letters preserved, his correspondence is a larger source corpus than even that of famous contemporary botanist
Carolus Clusius. Following the Phytopinax (Basel, 1596), Bauhin’s earliest botanical publication, the
Pinax theatri botanici (Basel, 1623, English:
Illustrated exposition of plants) was a landmark of
botanical history, describing some 6,000 species and classifying them. The classification system was not particularly innovative, using traditional groups such as "trees", "shrubs", and "herbs", and using other characteristics such as utilization, for instance grouping
spices into the
Aromata. He did ‘correctly’, by the standards of modern botany, group
grasses,
legumes, and several others. His most important contribution is in the description of genera and species. He introduced many names of genera that were later adopted by
Linnaeus, and remain in use. For species he carefully pruned the descriptions down to as few words as possible; in many cases a single word sufficed as description, thus giving the appearance of a two-part name. However, the single-word description was still a description intended to be diagnostic, not an arbitrarily-chosen name (in the Linnaean system, many species names honor individuals, for instance). In addition to
Pinax Theatri Botanici, Gaspard planned another work, a
Theatrum Botanicum, meant to be comprised in twelve parts folio, of which he finished three; only one, however, was published (1658), long after his death. He also gave a copious catalogue of the plants growing in the environs of Basel, its
flora, and edited the works of
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1500–1577) with considerable additions. His principal work on anatomy was
Theatrum Anatomicum infinitis locis auctum (1592). == Works ==