Pierre-Marie Alexis Millardet

Pierre -Marie Alexis Millardet ( born December 13, 1838 in Montmirey -la -Ville, Jura, † December 15 1902 in Bordeaux) was a French physician and botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Millardet ".

Life and work

Millardet first attended the Collège de l' Arc in Dole, later in Besançon. He then studied medicine and natural sciences at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg. He then returned to France and in 1868 professor of botany at the University Université de Strasbourg. In 1870 he moved to the Université de Nancy.

In 1874 he was appointed to a committee, which was commissioned by the French government to clarify the causes of the disease phylloxera vines and for the control. Millardet had first proposed to graft European scions on a support of American grapevines to disturb the generation of phylloxera.

1876 ​​Millardet received a call to the Chair of Botany at the University of Bordeaux. There he worked on the breeding of Rebhybriden in the process creating some new rootstock vines.

By chance he discovered the Bordelaise pulpe as agents against downy mildew, a fungal disease, which had been introduced from America and had led in some European wine - growing regions in devastating losses. Millardet had noticed that the vines of a vineyard were afflicted with this disease, the neighboring vineyard but not - where the grapes of these healthy vines were covered with a light blue layer. He inquired of the winery and this meant that he injected the grapes with a mixture of lime and copper sulfate. Millardet developed this recipe with his chemistry colleagues Ulysse Gayon on.

In commemoration of this discovery, a bronze bust was erected in 1902 in Bordeaux.

Writings

• Histoire des principales variétés et espèces de Vignes d' origine américaine qui au phylloxera resistant. Paris, Masson; Bordeaux, Feret; Milan, Hoepli, 1885.