Lucien Quélet

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Lucien Quélet

Lucien Quélet (July 14, 1832 – August 25, 1899) was a world-renowned French mycologist and naturalist who discovered several species and was the founder of the Société mycologique de France, a society devoted to mycological studies.^[1][2]

Quélet, having been born in Montécheroux, Doubs, to a farmer, was soon orphaned, and spent his childhood with and was raised by his aunts. In his youth, he is known to have shown a great interest in mycology and botany in general, but also other subject areas such as ornithology and malacology, the study of mollusks. He was schooled at the Montbéliard college, and later studied medicine in Strasbourg.^[1][2]

In 1884, he founded the mycological society known as the Société mycologique de France, of which he became the first president.^[1][2] Several years after this, in 1888, Quélet wrote a book, Mycologic Flora of France. The book claimed many different things that were not generally accepted within the mycological or scientific community, for it did also concern science. Despite this, Quélet remained unmoved, and maintained that he was correct in the theories expressed in his book. Some of the claims introduced by the book involved Quélet's intimate belief that humans, and most of the other creatures on Earth, had actually not become more advanced over history, but were gradually becoming more primitive.^[1]

Quélet also described several species during his mycological research. Some are listed below:

• Agaricus bitorquis
• Amanita aspera
• Bondarzewia montana
• Clavariadelphus truncatus
• Collybia cirrhata^[1]
• Lepiota aspera
• Lepiota castanea^[3]
• Russula amethystina
• Tricholoma pardinum

Russula queletii and Boletus queletii, were named after Quélet and his contributions to mycology.^[1]

Quélet himself was described by some to be a combination of Karsten and Paul Kummer, as far as his conducting of his studies and on his mycological researching skills, as well as by the number of new species he was able to find. ^[2] Much of Quélet's work proves useful still today, and many of the names given to some of the most common fungi can be traced to Quélet's work. ^[2]

During the last years of his life, Quélet broadened his range of study, perhaps due to eccentricity, as is claimed by some, and began have new interests in some of the things that fascinated him as a youth - ornithology and malacology, among others. In 1899, at the age of sixty-seven, Lucien Quélet died. ^[1][2]

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