Alire Raffeneau Delile

Alire Raffeneau Delile (January 23, 1778 Versailles – July 5, 1850 Montpellier) was a French botanist.

He studied botany with Jean Lemonnier, and was in the Paris medical school in 1796.

He participated in Napoleon Bonaparte's Egypt Campaign where he described Lotus and Papyrus. Director of the Cairo botanical garden, he wrote the botanical sections of Travel in Lower and Upper Egypt by Dominique Vivant. He made a cast of the Rosetta Stone which allowed the reproduction of its Greek and Demotic inscriptions in his Description de l'Égypte.

In 1802 he was appointed French vice consul at Wilmington, North Carolina, and also asked to form an herbarium of all American plants that could be naturalized in France. He sent to Paris several cases of seeds and grains, and discovered some new graminea and presented them to Palisot de Beauvois, who described them in his Agrostographie. Raffeneau made extensive explorations through the neighboring states, and, resigning in 1805, began the study of medicine in New York. During an epidemic of scarlet fever he was active in visiting the tenements of the poor, and in 1807 he obtained the degree of M.D.

He returned to France, and graduated as doctor in medicine from the University of Paris in 1809. In 1819, he was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Montpellier, which post he retained until his death. In 1832, he was named director of the botanical garden in Montpellier. He reports planting two Maclura saplings which can still be found there, and he added many species to its herbarium.

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