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Andrea Cesalpino

Andrea Cesalpino, 1524-1603, Italian physician.

Cesalpino, professor of medicine at Pisa and personal physician to Pope Clement VIII, published De plantis (1583), the first important taxonomic system since antiquity. His system of classifying the plants arranged them in a hierarchical order, and provided a starting point for Linnaeus a century and a half later. He also did work on the circulation of the blood shortly after William Harvey.