Gustave Thuret

Gustave Adolphe Thuret (23 May 1817 – 10 May 1875) was a noted French botanist, and founder of the Jardin botanique de la Villa Thuret.

Born in Paris, he belonged to an old Huguenot family, which had sought refuge for a time in the Dutch Republic after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Thuret's mother was brought up in England; English was the first language that he learnt, and he appears to have retained strong sympathies with Great Britain throughout his life. As a young man he studied Law, while being an amateur musician, and it was from a musical friend, de Villers, that he received, in 1837, his first initiation into botany. Beginning simply as a collector, he soon came under the influence of Joseph Decaisne, whose pupil he became. It was Decaisne who first encouraged him to undertake those algological studies which were to become the chief work of his life.

Thuret twice visited Istanbul in company with the French ambassador, Edouard Pontois, and was for a time attache to the French embassy to the Ottoman Empire. His diplomatic career, though of short duration, gave him a valuable opportunity of studying the Oriental flora. After travelling in Syria and Egypt in the autumn of 1841, he returned to France.

Giving up his intention of entering the civil service, he retired to his father's country house at Rentilly, and thereafter devoted himself to scientific research. He had already, in 1840, published his first scientific paper, Notes sur 1ère anthere de Chara et les animalcules qu'elle renferme, in which he first accurately described the organs of motion of the "animalcules" or spermatozoids of these plants. He continued his studies of the zoospores and male cells of Algae and other similar plants, and contributed to the understanding of such motile stages in vegetable life.

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