Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart
French botanist
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (born Jan. 14, 1801, Paris, Fr.—died Feb. 18, 1876, Paris) was a French botanist whose classification of fossil plants, which drew surprisingly accurate relations between extinct and existing forms prior to Charles Darwin’s principles of organic evolution, earned him distinction as the founder of modern paleobotany. Brongniart is also known for his valuable contributions to angiosperm (flowering plant) morphology, especially for his account of pollen development and pollen tube formation (1827). In 1831...