Antoine Laurent de Jussieu
Encyclopedia
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (12 April 1748 – 17 September 1836) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 botanist, notable as the first to propose a natural classification of flowering plant
Flowering plant
The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

s; much of his system remains in use today.

Life

Jussieu was born in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, the nephew of the botanist Bernard de Jussieu
Bernard de Jussieu
Bernard de Jussieu was a French naturalist, younger brother of Antoine de Jussieu.Bernard de Jussieu was born in Lyon...

. He went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 to study medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

, graduating in 1770. He was professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes
Jardin des Plantes
The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It is one of seven departments of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. It is situated in the 5ème arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the river Seine and covers 28 hectares .- Garden plan :The grounds of the Jardin des...

 from 1770 to 1826. His son Adrien-Henri
Adrien-Henri de Jussieu
Adrien-Henri de Jussieu was a French botanist.Born in Paris as the son of botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1824 with a treatise of the plant family Euphorbiaceae. When his father retired in 1826, he succeeded him at the Jardin des Plantes; in...

 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
Michel Adanson
Michel Adanson was a French naturalist of Scottish descent.Adanson was born at Aix-en-Provence. His family moved to Paris on 1730. After leaving the College Sainte Barbe he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. Reaumur and Bernard de Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin des Plantes. At the end of...

. This was a significant improvement over the original system of Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...

, who classified plants into classes and orders based on the number of stamen
Stamen
The stamen is the pollen producing reproductive organ of a flower...

s and pistils. Jussieu did keep Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages...

, 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
Sydney Howard Vines
Sydney Howard Vines FRS was a British botanist who held the Sherardian Chair of Botany at Oxford University from 1888 to 1919, served as President of the Linnean Society of London from 1900 to 1904, and directed the publication of the Annals of Botany from 1887 to 1899.-Education and career:Vines...

 remarked

In 1788, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

.

He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, Les Neuf Sœurs
Les Neuf Sœurs
Loge Les Neuf Sœurs , established in Paris in 1776, was a prominent French Masonic Lodge of the Grand Orient de France that was influential in organising French support for the American Revolution. A "Société des Neuf Sœurs," a charitable society that surveyed academic curricula, had been active at...

.
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