Charles Frédéric Martins

Born in Paris, Martins was a Protestant of German descent. He went to school in Paris and Geneva (where he was influenced by the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle) and studied medicine at the University of Paris with medical internship at the Hôpitaux de Paris. There he obtained his doctorate in 1834 with dissertation Principes de la méthode naturelle appliqués à la classification des maladies de la peau (Principles of the natural method applied to the classification of diseases of the skin). In 1839 he received his agrégation in natural history in Paris. He taught natural history at the Medical Faculty of the Sorbonne. At the University of Montpellier he became in 1846 professeur agrégé (associate professor) for natural sciences (botany and zoology) and in 1851 professor for medical botany and natural history and director of the Jardin des plantes de Montpellier. In 1879 he retired and resided in Paris.

He took part in various expeditions to the Alps, to Spitzbergen, and to the Sahara (in Egypt and in Algeria). He published a travel report Du Spitzberg au Sahara about his expeditions.[5] In addition to botany, he also published on geology and meteorology. He translated the textbook on meteorology by the physicist and meteorologist Ludwig Friedrich Kämtz. Martins edited a new edition of Achille Richard's Nouveaux Éléments de Botanique.[6] At the botanical garden in Montpellier, he supervised the building of a large glass house and an observatory.

He was a corresponding member of the Geological Society of London and, as a supporter of the theory of evolution, corresponded with Charles Darwin and Carl Vogt (a friend of Martins). He translated into French numerous German works. Martins translated Goethe's scientific writings. Martins wrote a preface for Edmond Barbier's translation of Charles Darwin's book on insectivorous plants[7] and a preface for Charles Letourneau's translation of Ernst Haeckel's book on the doctrine of evolution.[8] He was the editor of a new edition, published in 1873, of the Philosophie zoologique by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

In 1839 Martins was elected a member of the Leopoldina.[9] In 1853 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Montpellier and in 1870 he was its president. In 1863 he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Frédéric Martins.

• Biographie de Charles Frédéric Martins, Université de Montpellier, 2011
• L'herbier de l'université de Strasbourg
• Charles Frédéric Martins et le jardin botanique de Montpellier
• Notice biographique de Martins, Le livre du recteur de l'Académie de Genève (1559–1878), Genève, 1975
• Cliché photographique de Charles Frédéric Martins (1879), Bibliothèque Nationale de France