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Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) was born in Arezzo, Italy. He died on February 23, 1603 in Rome. He was a doctor, philosopher, university professor, but, above all, the most important botanist of his time.
He introduced the principles of the method and the lights of observation. His work De plantis, libri XVI (Florence, 1583), is the first attempt at a true systematization of botany, based on the characteristics of its fruits, seeds and its medicinal properties. His herbal collection, containing 768 species, is preserved in the Museum of Natural History in Florence.
He studied at the University of Pisa, where in 1555 he would be appointed director of the botanical garden and professor of Materia Medica (a science that deals with the preparation of drugs and medicines) from 1569 to 1592. In 1592, he was appointed physician to Pope Clement VIII. in Rome.
During the Renaissance, the botanical gardens spread and, unlike in the Middle Ages, which were next to the monasteries, here they were installed near the universities. The oldest was created by Gualtieri in Venice (1563). They also spread through France and Holland. Cesalpino was director of the Pisa botanical garden from 1555, succeeding Luca Chini. The botanist Piero Castelli was one of his students.
Andrea Cesalpino described and classified about 1,500 species. In part, his work was the starting point for the classification system developed by the Swedish botanist Carl von Linnaeus.
He made important discoveries about blood circulation, including defining that the heart (and not the liver) is the center of blood movement and the starting point of the arteries and veins. Cesalpino also carried out some work in the area of ??physiology. He proposed a theory of blood circulation that for him was a “chemical circulation” based on the repeated evaporation and condensation of blood.
In botany, he classified plants in his works according to their fruits and seeds rather than alphabetically or by their medicinal properties.
The Franciscan friar Charles Plumier gave the name Caesalpinia to a botanical genus and Linnaeus maintained it in his system. That genus includes approximately 150 species and is located in the family Fabaceae subfamily Acaesalpinioideae. Linnaeus, in his writings, frequently quotes his great predecessor in botanical science, and of him says:
Whosoever hath arisen here, let him grant the first honours
Casalpine will give you the first certainty.
That is, Linnaeus granted him the honor of recognizing him as the first. In fact, the abbreviation “Cesalpino” is used to indicate Andrea Cesalpino as an authority on the scientific description and classification of vegetables.
