Pierre Magnol

By Magnol's time the city of Montpellier was already long established as an important commercial and educational centre.

Individuals well-known in medicine and botany such as Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566), Charles de l'Ecluse (1526–1609), Pierre Richer de Belleval (c. 1564–1632), and the great writer (and doctor) François Rabelais (c. 1493–1553), all studied at this university.

[3] In December 1663 Magnol received the honorary title brevet de médecine royal through mediation of Antoine Vallot, an influential physician of the king.

No means of his financial stability are mentioned (Magnol did not have a wealthy family to support him) but it is suggested that he was practicing medicine and had an income out of that.

[5] From 1659 on he devoted much of his time to the study of botany and made several trips through the Languedoc, the Provence, to the Alps and to the Pyrenees.

He corresponded with John Ray, William Sherard and James Petiver (England), Paul Hermann and Petrus Houttuyn (Leiden), Jan Commelin (Amsterdam), J.H.

Magnol was one of the founding members of the Société Royale des Sciences de Montpellier (1706) and held one of the three chairs in botany.

Magnol's most important contribution to science is without doubt the invention of the concept of plant families, a natural classification, based on combinations of morphological characters, as set out in his Prodromus historiae generalis plantarum, in quo familiae plantarum per tabulas disponuntur (1689) (See under major works).

Cum appendice quae plantas de novo repertas continet et errata emendat.

[The royal garden of Montpellier, or rather a catalogue of the plants that are on show in the royal garden of Montpellier] 1720, Novus caracter [sic] plantarum, in duo tractatus divisus: primus, de herbis & subfructibus, secundus, de fructibus & arboribus.

[7] The name was later adopted by William Sherard, when he did the nomenclatural parts of Hortus Elthamensis by Johann Jacob Dillenius, and The Natural History of Carolina by Mark Catesby, to denote a flowering tree now known as Magnolia virginiana, taking it for the same species as that described by Plumier.

In this way, Magnolia became the generally recognized name of a large genus of ornamental flowering trees.