Augustin Pyramus de Candolle

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle entered botany through a herbarium recommendation from René Louiche Desfontaines. Within two years he'd established a new genus, then went on to document hundreds of plant families and build a new natural classification system. While cataloging, he recognized that unrelated species could independently develop similar traits - convergent evolution, though he had no term for it. He also observed that plant leaves moved on a near-24-hour cycle even in constant light, evidence of an internal clock that scientists dismissed until experiments proved him right over a century later. His son Alphonse and grandson Casimir carried the work forward, continuing the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis he'd begun. He died 9 September 1841.