Léon Guignard


Jean Louis Léon Guignard was a French pharmacist and botanist.
In 1882 he received his doctorate of sciences in Paris, and afterwards served as a professor of botany at the Faculty of Sciences of Lyon. In 1887 he succeeded Gaspard Adolphe Chatin as chair of botany at the Ecole Supérieure de Pharmacie in Paris. From 1900 to 1910 he was dean to the faculty of pharmacy.
In 1899 he was named president of the Académie des sciences. He was also a member of the Société de biologie, the Académie de Médecine and the Académie d'Agriculture. In 1920 he was chosen a commander in the Legion d'Honneur.
Along with Russian biologist Sergei Navashin, he is credited as the co-discoverer of double fertilization in flowering plants. The two men made their discoveries independent of each other, Navashin in 1898 and Guignard in 1899. He also introduced a new method for detecting the presence of hydrocyanic acid in plants. In addition, he conducted significant research on the origin and structure of integuments for a large number of seeds.

Selected works