Swiss botanist who introduced new methods of investigation and analysis to phytogeography, a branch of biology that deals with the geographic distribution of plants.

Candolle succeeded his father, the eminent botanist Augustin Pyrame de Candolle, to the chair of botany and as the director of the botanical gardens at the University of Geneva (1842–93). Candolle edited the last 10 volumes of the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis (17 vol., 1824–73), his father's massive attempt to classify and describe all known species of seed plants. He brought his father's laws of nomenclature to completion with Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1867). In 1867 Candolle called the first International Botanical Congress in Paris, which made a systematic attempt to standardize and decide nomenclatural practices in botany. Although Candolle's laws were adopted by the congress, they were not applied seriously by the botanists.

Candolle and his son, Anne-Casimir de Candolle (1836–1918), edited a series of monographs dealing with seed plants, Monographiae Phanerogamarum, 7 vol. (1879–91). Best known for his contributions to the study of the geographical distribution of plants, Alphonse wrote Géographie botanique raisonée, 2 vol. (1855), still a key work of phytogeography. In Origine des plantes cultivées (1883) Candolle sought to establish centres of plant origins by using historical, linguistic, and archaeological, as well as botanical, data.