Jussieu was born in Lyon. He was professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes from 1770 to 1826.
In his Genera plantarum Jussieu classified many of the families used today. Prior to him, Linnaeus classified plants into families based on the number of stamens and pistils. This put a lot of unrelated plants together and split some related ones apart. Jussieu classified plants based on a natural system. His name is abbreviated as "Juss." after the names of families and genera.