Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (5 June, 1656—28 December, 1708) was a French botanist.
His principal work was the 1694 Eléments de botanique, ou Méthode pour reconnaître les Plantes (the Latin translation of it Institutiones rei herbariae was published twice in 1700 and 1719), which classified plants according to the form of the corolla, but more importantly made a clear distinction between genus and species. With the concept of the genus, Tournefort was able to cluster the 6,000 known plant species into just 600 genera, making classification easier, and preparing the way for Linnaeus.
Tournefort was born in Aix-en-Provence and studied at the Jesuit convent there. It was intended that he enter the Church, but the death of his father allowed him to follow his interest in botany. After two years collecting, he studied medicine at Montpellier, but was appointed professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1683. During this time he travelled through western Europe, particularly the Pyrenees, where he made extensive collections. Between 1700 and 1702 he travelled through the islands of Greece and visited Constantinople, the borders of the Black Sea, Armenia, and Georgia, collecting plants and undertaking other types of observations. He was accompanied by the German botanist Andreas Gundesheimer (1668-1715) and the artist Claude Aubriet (1651-1743). His description of this journey was published posthumously (Relation d'un voyage du Levant).
Tournefort was run over and killed by a carriage in Paris in the road which now bears his name (Rue de Tournefort in the 5ème arrondissement).
The botanist Charles Plumier had been his pupil and accompanied him on his voyages.
[edit] References
Some material in this article is based upon content taken from the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is in the public domain.
[edit] See also
fr:Joseph Pitton de Tournefort ru:Питтон де Турнефор, Жозеф sv:Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
