Jussieu, DE, the name of a French family which, for a century and a half, numbered among its members some of the first botanists of the age.—ANTOINE DE JUSSIEU, born at Lyons, 6th July 1686, and died at Paris, 22d April 1758, was professor of Botany and director of the Botanical Garden at Paris, wrote various works on botany, and edited Tournefort's Institutiones Botanice (1719).—His brother, BERNARD DE JUSSIEU, born at Lyons, 17th August 1699, and died in Paris, 6th November 1777, contented himself with assisting Antoine and his son without seeking renown by the publication of his own observations. In 1758 he was named superintendent of the gardens at the Petit-Trianon, and there arranged the plants in accordance with a natural system substantially the same as that which his nephew Laurent subsequently elaborated in a more perfect manner.
He edited the second edition of Tournefort's Histoire des Plantes qui naissent dans les Environs de Paris (2 vols. 1725).—ANTOINE LAURENT DE JUSSIEU, born at Lyons, 12th April 1748, died at Paris, 17th September 1836, the nephew and pupil of Bernard, was appointed professor of Botany at the Paris Botanical Garden in 1770. His Genera Plantarum (1789) laid down the principles on which modern botanical classification is based (see BOTANY). On the outbreak of the Revolution the hospitals of Paris were put in his charge. In 1793 he organised the library of the Museum, one of the best in Europe. In 1826 he resigned his professorial chair to his son Adrien. He published numerous papers on botany in Annales du Museum (from 1804–20), and in Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles.—ADRIEN DE JUSSIEU, son of Laurent, born at Paris, December 23, 1797, died in the same city, June 29, 1853, succeeded his father in 1826. On taking the degree of M.D. in 1824, he presented as his thesis a valuable memoir on the Euphorbiaceæ. This was followed by equally useful papers on the Rutaceæ, Meliaceæ, and Malpighiaceæ, and a memoir on the embryo of the Monocotyledons. His Cours Élémentaire de Botanique (1842) reached a 12th edition in 1884. A number of able botanists of all nations owed their training to him.