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Victor Fayod (1860 - 1900) - a brief biography

Victor Fayod was born on 23rd November 1860 in Salaz, near Bex,in the Swiss canton of Vaud. He went to school in Bex and later in Lausanne before studying first mathematics and then silviculture (forestry science) at Zurich Polytechnic. The young Fayod was a competent linguist, able to write his scientific papers in French, German and Italian. While a student he also developed a keen interest in botany and, in particular, mycology. (There was no separation of mycology from botany in those days, of course.)

Fayod held a series of biology-related posts in Switzerland and in France before settling or a medical career, working as a dental surgeon at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. Poor health forced him to return to Switzerland, where after a long illness he died on 28th April, 1900.

Victor Fayod's mycological research was focussed largely on gilled fungi. He pioneered the - Classification of agarics based on microscopic characters such as the shapes and dimensions of spores, basidia and cystidia. Many of his proposed genus designations are still in current use, including for example Agrocybe and Cystoderma.

Fayod's most famous published mycological work is his 1889 Prodrome d'une histoire naturelle des agaricinées - Prodrome of a Natural History of the Agarics. (In medical parlance a 'prodrome' is a set of symptoms indicating the onset of a condition or illness.)

The abbreviation Fayod is used to indicate Victor Fayod as the author when citing a botanical or mycological name.

Reference sources

Prof. Ed. Fischer (1900). Victor Fayod 1860 - 1900. Verhandlungen der Schweizerischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft 83: XXXII–XXXVI.

Fayod, V. (1889). Prodrome d'une histoire naturelle des Agaricinés. Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Botanique, Sér. 7 9: 181–411; 365.

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