Maurice Bouly de Lesdain

Maurice Léopold Joseph Bouly de Lesdain (20 September 1869–3 January 1965) was a French botanist and lichenologist.

Early life and career

Bouly de Lesdain was born in Dunkirk on 20 September 1869. He did his classical studies at the Jesuit college in Boulogne-sur-Mer, then his medical studies in Paris where he obtained his doctorate in 1894. During his studies in Paris, he worked with French botanist Gaston Bonnier, who had succeeded in the experimental resynthesis of lichens; Bouly de Lesdain's biographer Henry Nicollon des Abbayes suggested that it was this early collaboration that strengthened his desire to work in the field of lichenology. In 1910, Bouly de Lesdain defended his research thesis for a doctorate in Natural Sciences, which was about the lichens near Dunkirk. Around this time he settled in Dunkirk as a practicing physician, but devoted his spare time to the study of natural history. In the following decades, he went on many excursions to collect samples for his personal herbarium, and maintained correspondence with several leading French and foreign lichenologists, with whom he exchanged publications and specimens. Species that have been named after him include; Nesolechia lesdainii ; Trichodiscula lesdainii ; Verrucaria lesdainii ;