Alfred Chabert

Alfred Chabert (1836 to 1916) was a French army physician and botanist from Chambéry in Savoy. He began exploring the plants of his home district at the age of twelve with his friend, the botanist André Songeon, a friendship that lasted more than fifty years. He took his medical doctorate at the Faculty of Turin in 1858, aged twenty-two, and served as a physician in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence, for which he received the Medal of Italy. When Savoy was ceded to France in 1860 he chose French nationality. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 he served with the 4th Corps of the Army of the Rhine and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor, and he then worked in several military hospitals until he retired in 1889 because of failing health. He remained an active botanist all his life, and several plant species were named in his honor.