Career
In December 1663 Magnol received the honorary title brevet de médecine royal through mediation of Antoine Vallot, an influential physician of the king. No means of his financial stability are mentioned (Magnol did not have a wealthy family to support him) but it is suggested that he was practicing medicine and had an income out of that. From 1659 on he devoted much of his time to the study of botany and made several trips through the Languedoc, the Provence, to the Alpes and to the Pyrenees. In 1664 there was a vacancy for 'Demonstrator of plants' in Montpellier and Magnol was proposed for the position. He was denied the appointment because of religious discrimination. This happened again in 1667 when he was the leading candidate for the chair of Professor of medicine.
Meanwhile Magnol had contacts with many prominent botanist and was highly esteemed by his contemporaries. He corresponded with John Ray, William Sherard and James Petiver (England), Paul Hermann and Petrus Houttuyn (Leiden), Jan Commelin (Amsterdam), J.H. Lavater (Zurich) and J. Salvador (Barcelona), among others.
In 1687, after his conversion to Catholicism, Magnol eventually became 'Demonstrator of plants' at the botanic garden of Montpellier. In 1693, recommended by Guy-Crescent Fagon (1638-1718), then court physician, and his own student Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), he was nominated 'doctor to the kings court'. In 1694 he finally was appointed Professor of medicine at the University of Montpellier. Through intervention of Fagon, he received a brevet de professeur royale. Magnol was also appointed Director of the botanic garden in 1696, for a three-year period. After that, he received the title 'Inspector of the garden' for the rest of his life.
Magnol was one of the founding members of the Société Royale des Sciences de Montpellier (1706) and held one of the three chairs in botany. In 1709 he was called to Paris to occupy the seat in the Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris that was left empty when his former student Joseph Pitton de Tournefort died prematurely.
Among Magnol's students were Tournefort and the brothers Antoine and Bernard de Jussieu.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Magnol
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