Robert Hippolyte Chodat

Robert Hippolyte Chodat (4 June 1865 – 28 April 1934) was a Swiss botanist, pharmacist and phycologist who was a professor and director of the botanical institute at the University of Geneva.

Robert Chodat

Biography

Chodat was born on 6 April 1865 in Moutier, in the Bernese Jura district of the canton of Bern, to Ferdinand Chodat and Emma Robert.^[1] He attended school in Bienne and Bern, then studied pharmacy and botany in Geneva, where he obtained a federal pharmacy diploma and a doctorate in natural sciences in 1887.^[1] Chodat ran his own pharmacy in Geneva until 1893.^[1] In 1888, he became a privat-docent in pharmacy at the University of Geneva.^[1] Chodat was appointed associate professor of medical and pharmaceutical botany in 1889, becoming a full professor two years later.^[1]

Chodat taught general and systematic botany from 1900 and was appointed director of the university's botanical institute, which he had founded in 1891 as the Laboratoire botanique.^[1] He served as rector from 1908 to 1910 as a director of the Jardin et laboratoire alpins de la Linnaea in Bourg-Saint-Pierre from 1915.^[1][2] In addition to excursions with his students (especially to the Mediterranean basin), Chodat conducted scientific expeditions to Paraguay and the United States.^[1] He was a member of numerous academies and the most important natural science societies in Europe, a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and a doctor honoris causa of ETH Zurich and the universities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Brussels and Cambridge.^[1] Chodat was the winner of the 1933 Linnean Medal. He died on 28 April 1934 in Carouge, near Geneva, aged 69.^[1]

Work

Chodat published over 450 works covering a wide range of topics, including systematics, botanical geography, paleobotany, biochemistry, genetics and the biology of cryptogams (especially green algae). He was a leading authority of the botanical family Polygalaceae. In 1914, with Emil Hassler (1864–1937), Chodat collected plants in Región Oriental of Paraguay.^[2]

Selected publications

• Monographia Polygalacearum, vol.1 1891, vol.2 1893.
• 1898–1907 : Plantae Hasslerianae (with Emil Hassler).^{[3][4][5][6][7]}
• Etude Critique et Experimentale sur le Polymorphisme des Algues, 1909.
• La Végétation du Paraguay. Résultats Scientifiques d'une Mission Botanique Suisse au Paraguay, (with Wilhelm Vischer 1890–1960).
• La biologie des plantes: Les plantes aquatiques, 1917.

References

• Parts of this article are based on a translation of an equivalent article at the Spanish Wikipedia.
• Robert Chodat, Dictionnaire Historique Suisse (DHS)
• HUH- Index of Botanical Publications