Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de

Born June 5, 1656, in Aix-en-Provence; died Dec. 28, 1708, in Paris. French botanist and physician. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1691); professor of medicine at the College de France (1702).

Tournefort traveled throughout Western Europe, Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia. He collected and described more than 1,000 new species of plants. Tournefort developed an artificial classification system of plants (1694–1700), based on the structure of the corolla and embracing more than 10,000 species. His system was widely accepted before the appearance of the Linnaean system (1735). Many taxons accepted or described by Tournefort, especially genera, are acknowledged in modern botany. A number of them have been placed in other categories.