Robert Virot (10 August 1915 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

; 10 March 2002

Le Buisson-de-Cadouin Le Buisson-de-Cadouin (; ) is a commune in the Dordogne department in southwestern France. It is situated on the left bank of the river Dordogne. The Gare du Buisson is a railway junction, with connections to Bordeaux, Sarlat-la-Canéda, Agen ...

Dordogne Dordogne ( , or ; ; ) is a large rural departments of France, department in south west France, with its Prefectures in France, prefecture in Périgueux. Located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region roughly half-way between the Loire Valley and ...

) was a French botanist. He obtained a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in science from Paris University in 1956. He lived in

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

from 1936 to 1947. He then returned to France were here worked for the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

at the

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

His PhD thesis published as "La végétation canaque" in 1956 is one of the first major ecological studies of the flora of New Caledonia. He also wrote taxonomic monographs of

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family (biology), family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genus, genera with about 1,660 known species. Australia and South Africa have the greatest concentr ...

and Epacridaceae (=

Ericaceae The Ericaceae () are a Family (biology), family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with about 4,250 known species spread acros ...

) from New Caledonia as parts of the series flore de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

References

* Morat P (2010) Les botanistes collecteurs en Nouvelle-Calédonie de 1774 à 2005. Adansonia 32:239–249 * Virot R (1956) La végétation canaque. Faculté des Sciences de l’université de Paris, Paris * Virot R (1967) Protéacées. In: Aubréville A (ed) Flore de la Nouvelle-Calédonie et Dépendances, volume 2. Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. * Virot R (1975) Epacridacées. In: Aubréville A, Leroy JF (eds) Flore de la Nouvelle-Calédonie et Dépendances, volume 6. Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. {{DEFAULTSORT:Virot, Robert 20th-century French botanists 1915 births 2002 deaths University of Paris alumni