Jussieu, Antoine De

Jussieu, Antoine De

(b, Lyons, France, 6 July 1686; d. Paris, France, 22 April 1758)

botany, paleontology.

Antoine de Jussieu was the son of Laurent de Jussieu, a Lyonnais apothecary. He was the first in the botanical dynasty that included his younger brothers Bernard and Joseph and his nephew AntoineLaurent. Jussieu studied medicine and botany at Montpellier under Pierre Magnol, the first French botanist to attempt a natural classification of plants and the originator of the family concept in botany. Having obtained the M.D. degree on 15 December 1707, Jussieu went to Paris to study under Tournefort, who died shortly after Jussieu’s arrival. Tournefort’s successor as professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi, Danty d’Isnard, resigned in 1710 and Jussieu, then twenty-four, was appointed to this post, which he occupied until his death. During his first years as professor he traveled in France, Spain, and Portugal; his later years were spent in Paris.

Jussieu’s published contributions to the natural sciences were numerous but relatively modest with respect to content. His main activities were the development of the Jardin du Roi and the training of Tournefort, and his brothers were among his students. Jussieu was also a successful physician, laying the foundation for the fortune that enabled the other family members to pursue their scientific careers.

Jussieu was the first (1715) to give a scientific description of the coffee plant, which he grew from seed obtained from the Amsterdam Botanic Garden. Although his description was detailed and precise, he did not recognize the plant, as did Linnaeus in 1737, as a genus of its own. In later years Jussieu tried to stimulate the cultivation of coffee in several of the French colonies, especially on the Ile de Bourbon (now the island of Réunion).

Jussieu was responsible for a posthumous edition of Jacques Barrelier’s important Plantae per Galliam, Hispaniam et Italiam observatae (1714 and the third edition of Tournefort’s Institutiones. He also wrote numerous memoirs, the most noteworthy of which is his treatise (1728) on the need to established the fungi as a separate class of plants, the Plantae fungosae. Discovering the fungal narure of the nongreen components of lichens, Jussieu proposed that lichens and fungi be classified together. He regarded the spores of the higher basidiomycetes as seeds.

Possibly influenced by Scheuchzer’s Herbarium diluvianum (1709), Jussieu in 1718 was one of the first to give a correct interpretation of fossil remains of ferns found in the coal mines of the Lyons region.

He also recognized the animal nature of ammonites, and his interest in archaeology led him to publish on the various uses of flint by prehistoric tribes, insisting on the extreme patience and care with which some of these early instruments and tools had been made.

Jussieu’s universality, together with an openminded inductive approach to nature, made him a forerunner of the philosophes, a pioneer in colonial agriculture, and the originator of botanical hypotheses that would not be accepted until much later in the century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Orginal Works. Jussieu’s works include “Description de Coryspermum hyssipifolium,” in Mémories de l’Académie royale des sciences (1712), pp. 187-189; “Historie de cafe,” ibid., 1713 (1716), pp.291-299; “Histoire du Kali d’Alicante,” ibid. (17170, pp. 73-78; Discours sur le progres de la botanique au jardin royal de Paris, suivi d’une introduction à la connaissance des plantes (Paris, 1718); “Examen des causes des impressions de plantes marquees sur certaines pierres des environs de Saint-Chaumont dans le Lyonnais,” in Memories de I’Académie royale des scinces (1718), pp. 287-297; “Réflexions sur plusieurs observations concernant la nature de Gyps,” ibid. (1719), pp. 82-93; “Appendix,” in J. P. de Tournefort, Institutiones rei herbariae, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1719); “The Analogy Between plants and Animals, Drawn From the Difference of Their Sexes,” in Richard Bradley, A Philosophiocal Account of the Works of Nature (London, 1721), pp. 25-32; “Recherches physiques sur les pétrifications qui se trouvent en France de divers parties de plantes et d’animaux extrangers,” in Memories de l’Academine royale des sciences (1721), pp. 69-75, 322-324; “De l’origine et de la formation d’une sorte de pierre finguree que l’on nommé corne d’ammon,” ibid. (1722), pp. 235-243; “De l’orgine et des usages de la pierre de foudre, “ibid. (1723), pp. 6-9 “Observation sur quelques ossments d’une tete d’hippopotame,” ibid. (1724), pp. 209-215; “Description d’un champignon qui peut-etre nomme champignon-lichen,” ibid. (1728), pp. 268- 272; “De la nécessite d’etablir dans la methode nouvelle des plantes, une classe particulière pour les fungus, à laquelle doivent se rapporter non seulement les champignons, les agarics, mais encore les lichen,” ibid., pp. 377-383; and Traité des vertus des plantes (Nancy, 1771, 2nd ed., Paris, 1772), a posthumous work edited and enlarged by Gandoger de Foigny.

II. Secondary Literature. For an index to Jussieu’s publications, see J. Dryander, Catalogus bibliothecae historico- naturalis Josephi Banks, V (London, 1800), 299. Additional references include A. Lacroix, “Notice historique sur les cinq Jussieu,” in Memoires de l’Acadêmie des sciences de l’Institut de France, 2nd ser., 63 (1941), 8-21; W. J. Lütjeharms, Zur Geschichte der Mykologie, Das XVIII. Jahrhundert (Gouda, 1936), pp. 131-133; A. Magnin, “Prodrome d’une historie des botanistes Lyonnais,” in Bulletin Société botanique de Lyon, 31 (1906), 28; and F. A. Stafleu, Introduction to Jussieu’s Genera plantarum (Weinheim, 1964), pp.iv-viii.

Frans A. Stafleu