Alpini, Prospero (1553-1616)

Italian botanist and physician, director of the botanical garden at Padua, which was originally developed in order to grow plants for their medicinal uses. He studied plants out of interest in both their therapeutic uses and also their structure.

His De medicina Aegyptorium/On Egyptian Medicine was published in 1591, and his De plantis Aegypti liber/Book of Egyptian Plants (1592) included the first European descriptions of the coffee bush (coffee arabica) and the banana tree. He also studied the flora of Crete. Such was his reputation as a botanist in the 16th century that Linnaeus named the genus Alpinia in his honour.

Alpini was born in Maroshica, Italy, and studied medicine at Padua University, graduating in 1578. In 1580 he went to Cairo for three years as the Venetian consul's physician and then returned to Venice. In 1603 he was made the director of the botanical garden at Padua, the earliest European botanical garden of which there are reliable records. The position was later occupied by his son Alpino. He died in Padua of a kidney infection. Other works include De praesagienda vita et morte aegrotontium/The Presages of Life and Death in Diseases (1601).