He went to Paris in 1765 to be with his uncle Bernard and to study medicine, graduating with a doctorate in 1770, with a thesis on animal and vegetable physiology.

Jussieu adhered to the revolutionary principles and was appointed to a position in the municipal government of Paris, where he had the task of managing all the hospitals.

[12] The following year he developed the concept further in a paper on the arrangement of plants in the Jardin de Roi, based on the work of his uncle Bernard at the Trianon garden in Versaille.

[13] The following five years were devoted to applying his ideas to the entire plant kingdom, culminating in his epochal work, the Genera plantarum (1789).

Although at first British and German botanists, firm adherents of the Linnaean system, were wary of what they considered radical ideas emanating from the French revolution,[5] the work soon gained wide acceptance in scientific circles, and was actively promoted by eminent botanists including Robert Brown and A. P. de Candolle.

[9][3] In the Genera plantarum (1789), Jussieu adopted a methodology based on the use of multiple characters to define groups, an idea derived from naturalist Michel Adanson.

As Jusssieu put it, plant characteristics should be pesés et non comptés (weighed, not counted), in assigning each to a definite group.

Morton's 1981 History of botanical science counts 76 of Jussieu's families conserved in the ICBN, versus just 11 for Linnaeus, for instance.

A statue of Jussieu, commissioned for 10,000 Fr by Jean-François Legendre-Héral in 1842, stands in the Galerie de Botanique of the Jardin des Plantes.