Pier Antonio Micheli

Biography

Micheli was born in Florence in 1679. He taught himself Latin and began the study of plants at a young age under Bruno Tozzi. In 1706 he was appointed botanist to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, director of the Florence gardens, and a professor at the University of Pisa.

His Nova plantarum genera (1729) was a major step in the knowledge of fungi. In this work, he gave descriptions of 1900 plants, of which about 1400 were described for the first time. Among these were 900 fungi and lichens, accompanied by 73 plates. He included information on "the planting, origin and growth of fungi, mucors, and allied plants", and was the first to point out that fungi have reproductive bodies or spores. His work was met with skepticism by other botanists of the time.

He observed that when spores were placed on slices of melon the same type of fungi were produced that the spores came from, and from this observation he noted that fungi did not arise from spontaneous generation. He also formulated a systematic classification system with keys for genera and species.

He was a collector of plant and mineral specimens, and on one of his collecting trips, in 1736, he contracted pleurisy, of which he soon after died in Florence.