Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737 to 1813) was a French pharmacist and agronomist, best remembered as a vocal promoter of the potato as a food source for people in France and across Europe. As an army pharmacist in the Seven Years' War he was captured by the Prussians and, held in prison, was made to eat potatoes, which the French then knew mainly as hog feed. Back in Paris he pursued nutritional chemistry and won a prize in 1773 for proposing the potato as nourishment. He hosted dinners where potato dishes featured and was granted ground near Neuilly to show that the crop would grow in poor soil. In 1789 he published a treatise on the culture and use of the potato, sweet potato and Jerusalem artichoke, printed by order of the king. His wider interests ran to bread making, cheese making, grain storage, maize and chestnut flour, mushroom culture and wine making; he taught at the Free School of Bakery from 1779, pioneered extraction of sugar from sugar beets and organized the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign in France. Some popular anecdotes about him, such as a ban on the potato in France or a trick with guarded fields, are not supported by evidence.