Although not quite the revolutionary thinker his father Augustin was, Alphonse de Candolle yet exhibited a level of industry and logical acuity that led to his ascending to the top rank of nineteenth century botanists as well. Candolle succeeded his father as chair of botany and director of the botanical garden at Geneva, but retired from both positions in his mid-forties to devote himself to research full-time. He devoted some of his energy to doing basic descriptive botany (including carrying on his father's work on the Prodromus, and mounting his own project, the Monographiae phanerogamarum), but he also became deeply interested in phytogeographic studies. His 1855 treatise Géographie Botanique Raisonnée, despite its pre-Darwinian creationist orientation, featured much close analysis regarding the environmental causes of plant distribution, especially variations in temperature regimes, and is a key early title. Candolle would later come to embrace Darwinism (even translating into French Wallace's Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection), and the concept of evolution would inform two of his late works: Histoire des Sciences..., a commentary-like history of science, and Origine des Plantes Cultivées, an important early title in crop geography and the history of domestication. Candolle, like his father, was much involved in various forms of public service (he was responsible, for example, for introducing the use of postage stamps into Switzerland). Candolle's son Casimir was also a prominent botanist, as was his son.