Michel Étienne Descourtilz, Date of Birth, Date of Death

Michel Étienne Descourtilz

French physician, botanist and historiographer of the Haitian revolution

Date of Birth: 25-Nov-1775

Date of Death: 01-Jan-1835

Profession: physician, historian, botanist, mycologist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius

Michel Étienne Descourtilz (25 November 1777, Boiste near Pithiviers – 1835, Paris), was a French physician, botanist and historiographer of the Haitian Revolution.
He was the father of illustrator Jean-Théodore Descourtilz, with whom he sometimes collaborated. In 1799, after completing his medical studies he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina and Santiago, Cuba, arriving in Haiti on 2 April.
Despite a passport from Toussaint Louverture and serving as physician with the forces of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he was in constant danger.
His plant collections were mostly from between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien and along the Artibonite River.
All his natural history collections and many drawings were destroyed during the course of the revolution.
In 1803 he returned to France, worked as a physician in a hospital at Beaumont and served as president of the Paris Linnean Society.As a taxonomist he circumscribed the genus Nauchea (family Fabaceae).