Édouard Placide Duchassaing de Fontbressin (c. 1819 in Moule, Guadeloupe – 1873 in Périgueux) was a French naturalist.
Afterwards, he returned to Guadeloupe as a physician, spending his free time conducting research of the island's flora.
Subsequently, he visited several other islands of the Antilles, eventually relocating as a physician to Santa Marta, Panama (1848), from where he studied the natural history of the isthmus, sending his plant specimens to Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers, a botanist in Berlin (these specimens later became the property of August Grisebach).
He remained in Saint Thomas for 15 years, during which time he performed extensive research of sponges and coral, collecting and describing a large number of species with Giovanni Michelotti (1812-1898).
[1] The plant genus Duchassaingia (synonym Erythrina, family Fabaceae) was named in his honor by Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers.