Desfontaines was born near
Tremblay in
Brittany. He attended the
Collège de Rennes and in 1773 went to
Paris to study
medicine. His interest in
botany originated from lectures at the
Jardin des Plantes given by
Louis Guillaume Lemonnier. He excelled in his new interest and was elected to the
French Academy of Sciences in 1783. He was also a member of the
Académie Nationale de Médecine. Desfontaines spent two years in
Tunisia and
Algeria, returning with a large collection of plants. He wrote
Flora Atlantica (1798–1799, 2 vols), which included 300 genera new to science. In addition, he worked also on ornithology, and presented the findings of his expeditions to Africa for one of the ''Memoires de L'Académie Royale des Sciences
. Although the Mémoire'' corresponds to the year 1787, it was not published until 1789 by L'Imprimerie Royal as part of the ''Histoire de L'Académie Royale de Sciences
. The convulsions of the French Revolution may have made the access to the text so scarce that in 1880 the ornithologist Alfred Newton republished the original text under the title Desfontaines's Mémoire sur quelques nouvelles espèces d'oiseaux des côtes de Barbarie'' on behalf of the Willughby Society of London. In 1786, he was appointed professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes, replacing Lemonnier. He later became director of the
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, was one of the founders of the
Institut de France, president of the
Academy of Sciences, and elected to the
Légion d’honneur. During the French Revolution he was appointed to the Commission Temporaire des Arts where he shaped a new vision of Natural History. Desfontaines established a herbarium, known as the
Flora Atlantica, which has 1480 specimens and contains many type specimens for Mediterranean species. It was left to the City of Paris after his death. The genera
Desfontainia and
Fontanesia are named for this author. The standard
author abbreviation Desf. is used to indicate this individual as the author when
citing a
botanical name. == List of works ==