Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) was a French botanist. He was born to a well-to-do family in Aix-en-Provence. Tournefort initially took up studies in theology. However, as he had a marked inclination towards natural sciences, he turned to medicine. He completed his studies at the University of Montpellier. In 1681, he was in Barcelona doing research in botany. In 1694 Tournefort published his first three-volume work, in which he classied 8,846 plants. In 1698 he became Doctor in Medicine of the University of Paris. At that time his treatise was also translated into Latin. Tournefort became a famous physician and naturalist. He travelled extensively in Western Europe (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England). He had published a number of works on botany, and had acquired a fabulous collection of nearly 50,000 books, as well as costumes, arms, minerals, shells and various curiosities. Thus, he already had a very important career behind him when Louis XIV entrusted him with the mission to bring new plants to the Royal Botanical Garden.

Tournefort started out on his voyage to the Near East in the spring of 1700, at the age of 44, accompanied by a painter and a doctor. He visited thirty-eight islands of the Greek archipelago, as well as Northern Anatolia, Pontus and Armenia, and reached Tiflis in Georgia. Tournefort returned to Marseilles in June 1702.

His manuscript, composed of his letters to the Minister of the Exterior Count de Pontchartain, was published posthumously in 1717. Having survived a multitude of adventures, Tournefort died of an accident in 1708. He did not live to see the publication of his travel chronicle, which in the following three centuries became the basic manual to all travellers to these regions. Until today, researchers from numerous fields turn to Tournefort’s text, as it remains an invaluable source of information.