Joseph Pitton de Tournefort

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (5 June 1656 – 28 December 1708) was a French botanist.

He is known for being the first person to explain the idea of a group called a genus for plants. This helped scientists organize plants better.

Another botanist, Charles Plumier, was his student and traveled with him during his trips to study plants.

Life

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was born in Aix-en-Provence and studied at the Jesuit convent there. He was meant to join the Church, but his father's death let him follow his passion for plants. He collected plants and later studied medicine in Montpellier. In 1683, he became a botany teacher at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He traveled through Western Europe, especially the Pyrenees, gathering many plants.

From 1700 to 1702, he explored the islands of Greece, visiting Constantinople, near the Black Sea, and places like Armenia and Georgia. He collected plants and made other observations, with the German botanist Andreas Gundelsheimer and artist Claude Aubriet. His travel story was published after his death. He passed away after being hit by a carriage in Paris.

Work

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort wrote an important book about plants in 1694 called Eléments de botanique, ou Méthode pour reconnaître les Plantes. An artist named Claude Aubriet helped with the pictures. Though some parts of the book were not very advanced, it was clear and useful. Many botanists liked it and used its ideas for years.

Tournefort is remembered for being the first to clearly explain the idea of a plant group called a genus. He grouped many plant species into larger groups, but others had thought about these ideas before him. He may have been the first to use the word herbarium to describe a collection of dried plants. His own plant collection is now kept in Paris at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Later, a plant genus was named Pittoniotis in his honor.

List of selected publications

• Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de wrote a book called Éléments de botanique in French in 1694. It was later translated into Latin and published in three volumes.
• He also wrote about plants near Paris in 1698.
• In 1717, he shared stories from his travels to the East and wrote about medicines made from plants.