Antoine Laurent de Jussieu

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu
Born	(1748-04-12)12 April 1748 Lyon, France
Died	17 September 1836(1836-09-17) (aged 88)
Residence	France
Nationality	France
Fields	Botany
Institutions	Jardin des Plantes
Known for	Classification of flowering plants
Author abbrev. (botany)	Juss.

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (12 April 1748 – 17 September 1836) was a French botanist, notable as the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today. His classification was based on and extended unpublished work by his uncle, the botanist Bernard de Jussieu.

Life

Jussieu was born in Lyon. He went to Paris to study medicine, graduating in 1770. He was professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes from 1770 to 1826. His son Adrien-Henri also became a botanist.

In his study of flowering plants, Genera plantarum (1789), Jussieu adopted a methodology based on the use of multiple characters to define groups, an idea derived from Scottish-French naturalist Michel Adanson. This was a significant improvement over the "artificial" system of Linnaeus, whose most popular work classified plants into classes and orders based on the number of stamens and pistils. Jussieu did keep Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature, resulting in a work that was far-reaching in its impact; many of the present-day plant families are still attributed to Jussieu. Morton's 1981 History of botanical science counts 76 of Jussieu's families conserved in the ICBN, versus just 11 for Linnaeus, for instance. Writing of the natural system, Sydney Howard Vines remarked

"The glory of this crowning achievement belongs to Jussieu: he was the capable man who appeared precisely at the psychological moment, and it is the men that so appear who have made, and will continue to make, all the great generalisations of science."^[1]

In 1788, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, Les Neuf Sœurs.

Works

• Jussieu, Antoine Laurent de (1789). Genera plantarum : secundum ordines naturales disposita, juxta methodum in Horto regio parisiensi exaratam, anno M.DCC.LXXIV. Paris.  
• Jussieu, Antoine Laurent de. Opuscules de botanique. Retrieved 2009-08-19. 
• Principes de la méthode naturelle des végétaux. París, 1824.
• 1770 : An aeconomiam animalem inter et vegetalem analogiae ou Comparaison de la structure et des fonctions des organes végétaux avec les phénomènes de la vie animale (Thèse défendue devant la faculté de médecine de Paris)
• 1773 : . Paris 1777, p. 214–240Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences. Année 1773 In: Mémoire sur la famille des renonculacées.
• 1774 : . Paris 1777, p. 175–197Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences. Année 1774 In: Exposition d'un nouvel ordre de plantes adopté dans les démonstrations du Jardin royal.
• . Paris 1777, pp. 214–240Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences. Année 1773 In: Examen de la famille des Renoncules.

See also

De Jussieu system

References

• Duane Isely, One hundred and one botanists (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 118–120
•  
•  

Authority control VIAF: 100972099

Bibliography

• Stevens, Peter Francis (2013). The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System. Columbia University Press, 2013.