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."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.
Read more about this topic: Antoine Laurent De Jussieu
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Mothers who are strong people, who can pursue a life of their own when it is time to let their children go, empower their children of either gender to feel free and whole. But weak women, women who feel and act like victims of something or other, may make their children feel responsible for taking care of them, and they can carry their children down with them.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit: I within did flow
With seas of life like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ‘twas divine.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)