Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (5 June 1656 – 28 December 1708) was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants.

His description of this journey was published posthumously (Relation d'un voyage du Levant),[1] he himself having been killed by a carriage in Paris; the road on which he died now bears his name (Rue de Tournefort in the 5ème arrondissement).

Tournefort's principal work was the 1694 Eléments de botanique, ou Méthode pour reconnaître les Plantes (the Latin translation of it Institutiones rei herbariae was published twice in 1700 and 1719).

Overall it was a step backwards in systematics, yet the text was so clearly written and well structured, and contained so much valuable information on individual species, that it became popular amongst botanists, and nearly all classifications published for the next fifty years were based upon it.

published Pittoniotis, a genus of flowering plants from South America, belonging to the family Rubiaceae and named in honour of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort.