Persoon, Christiaan Hendrik (1761-1836)

South African botanist who was one of the first to fully describe fungi. His Synopsis fungorum 1801 was a founding text of modern mycology. Although his observations of microscopic plant life were extremely influential in his day, Persoon held the erroneous view that some fungi grew from spores, while others formed by spontaneous generation.

Persoon was born at the Cape of Good Hope. He went to Europe to be educated 1775. He attended the gymnasium at Lingen, studied theology at Halle, and began his medical studies at Leiden. In 1787, he went to Göttingen, where he studied natural sciences as well as medicine. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Erlangen 1799.

In 1802 he moved to Paris, but he did not ever have a paid job and was never a wealthy man. In 1828 he gave his botanical collections to the Rijksherbarium in Leiden in exchange for a pension to live on in his old age.