Physician and botanist, born in Hesse, Germany. He first studied pharmacy and botany (152733) under his physician father, Euricius Cordus, later attending the universities of Marburg (152731) and Wittenberg (153944). He also trained in his uncle's apothecary shop (15339) in Leipzig, and in 1540 wrote about the synthesis of ether. A popular lecturer, he died of malaria at the age of 29 after completing five books of his Historia Plantarum.
Valerius Cordus (18 February 1515 – 25 September 1544) was a German physician and botanist who authored one of the greatest pharmacopoeias and one of the most celebrated herbals in history.
The son of an ardent Lutheran convert, Valerius Cordus was born either in Hesse or Erfurt. He began his higher education in 1527, at the young age of 12, studying botany and pharmacy under the tutelage of his father, Professor Euricius Cordus, M.D.
In 1539 he relocated to the University of Wittenberg, where he lectured and studied medicine.
In 1540 Cordus discovered and described a revolutionary technique for synthesizing ether, which involved adding sulfuric acid to ethyl alcohol.
In 1542 he began travelling back and forth between Germany and Italy for his research and studies, and also presented his great pharmacopoeia, Dispensatorium, to the Nuremberg city council.
The University of Wittenberg awarded him a medical degree in 1544, the same year that his great herbal in five volumes, Historia Plantarum, was published—a work unique at the time for its balanced analysis of interest not only to botanists, but to pharmacists and herbalists as well.
Later that same year, at the age of 29, Cordus died of malaria while in Rome. Throughout his short life, Valerius travelled extensively, visited many universities, and was widely acclaimed by his colleagues and other associates.
After the death of Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gessner published a considerable amount of Cordus' remaining unpublished work, including De Extractione (which featured Cordus' ether synthesis method) and Historia Stirpium et Sylva in 1561.
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