Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu

French plant taxonomist (1748–1836)

Jussieu was born into a family of eminent botanists from Lyons in France. His uncles Antoine, Bernard, and Joseph de Jussieu all made important contributions to botany and his son, Adrien, subsequently continued the family tradition.

After graduating from the Jardin du Roi in 1770, Jussieu continued to work there, becoming subdemonstrator of botany in 1778. In his first publication in 1773, which reexamined the taxonomy of the Ranunculaceae, he advanced the idea of relative values of characters; the following year he applied this principle to other plant families.

Jussieu is remembered for introducing a natural classification system that distinguishes relationships between plants by considering a large number of characters, unlike the artificial Linnean system, which relies on only a few. In producing the famous Genera Plantarum (1789; Genera of Plants) Jussieu had access to a number of collections, including Linnaeus's herbarium and some of Joseph Banks's Australian specimens. He was also able to include many tropical angiosperm families thanks to the collection made by Philibert Commesson. From all this material he distinguished 15 classes and 100 families, and the value of his work can be seen in the fact that 76 of his 100 families remain in botanical nomenclature today. Both Georges Cuvier and Augustin de Candolle built on Jussieu's system.

Jussieu was in charge of the hospital of Paris during the French Revolution and was professor of botany at the National Natural History Museum (formerly the Jardin du Roi) from 1793 to 1826.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: French botanist who categorized plants into families and developed a system of plant classification (1748-1836)
  Synonym: Antoine Laurent de Jussieu

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

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (April 12, 1748 - September 17, 1836) was a French botanist, notable as the first to propose a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today.

Jussieu was born in Lyon, the nephew of the botanist Bernard de Jussieu. 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 original system of Linnaeus, who classified plants into families 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.

Works

• Jussieu, Antoine Laurent de (1789). Genera Plantarum, secundum ordines naturales disposita juxta methodum in Horto Regio Parisiensi exaratam. OCLC 315729. Retrieved on 2007-02-19. 

References

• Duane Isely, One hundred and one botanists (Iowa State University Press, 1994), pp. 118-120
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "De Jussieu", a publication now in the public domain.
• "De Jussieu". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 

The standard author abbreviation Juss. is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.

Persondata
NAME	Jussieu, Antoine Laurent de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Botanist who classified the flowering plants
DATE OF BIRTH	April 12, 1748
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lyon, France
DATE OF DEATH	September 17, 1836
PLACE OF DEATH

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