Bosc was born in
Paris, the son of Paul Bosc d’Antic, a medical doctor and chemist. He studied at
Dijon, where he was the pupil of botanist Jean-François Durande and chemist
Louis-Bernard Guyton-Morveau. Being unable to become an artilleryman, he worked initially for the office of the
controller general and then for the comptroller of the postal service. In time he took courses in botany under
Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu and met botanist
René Desfontaines and naturalist
Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet. He also took up with
Jean Marie Roland and
Madame Roland and formed a lasting relationship with Danish entomologist
Johan Christian Fabricius. While working for the postal service he carried out work on natural history, publishing a description of a new species of bug,
Orthezia characias, and a method of preserving insect larvae. In 1785 Bosc was invited to join the
Lapérouse round the world expedition as a naturalist, but declined. This was fortunate for him, as the expedition was lost after leaving
Botany Bay in March 1788. Together with
André Thouin,
Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet,
Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison and Pierre Willemet, Bosc participated, in 1787, in the founding of the first Linnean society in the world, the
Société linnéenne de Paris. They were soon joined by other naturalists. This society was dissolved in 1789, in part due to hostility from the established
Académie Royale des Sciences. Both Bosc and Broussonet were among the first foreign members of the
Linnean Society of London. After the
Storming of the Bastille in 1789, new laws in France permitted freedom of the press and assembly, allowing the formation of new societies, newspapers and journals. Among these was the Société d'Histoire Naturelle, founded in 1790 in Bosc's Home. Its journal, ''Actes de la société d'histoire naturelle de Paris'' was short-lived, but included a number of items by Bosc.. Both Bosc and the Society were politically active, with Republican leanings. Bosc was a member of the
Jacobin Club. Bosc was brought back to France, where he served for a time as administrator of hospitals and prisons and obtained, in 1803, after a sojourn in Switzerland and Italy courtesy of
Georges Cuvier, a position in the gardens and nurseries of Versailles. He gave his collections to his naturalist friends. Thus, Fabricius and
Guillaume-Antoine Olivier received his insects;
François Marie Daudin, his birds;
Pierre André Latreille, his reptiles; and the
comte de Lacépède, his fish. He was also the friend and protector of naturalists
Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent and
Jean-Marie Léon Dufour. In 1806, he was elected to membership in the
Académie des sciences in the rural husbandry section. In 1825, he succeeded
André Thouin to the chair of plant culture at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He died unexpectedly not many years later in Paris, in 1828. ==Legacy==