Jean Paul Vuillemin

Not to be confused with French computer scientist Jean Vuillemin.

Jean Paul Vuillemin (13 February 1861 – 25 September 1932 in Malzéville) was a French mycologist born in Docelles.

Jean Paul Vuillemin (1861-1932)

He studied at the University of Nancy, earning his medical doctorate in 1884. In 1892 he obtained his doctorate in sciences at the Sorbonne, and from 1895 to 1932 he was a professor of natural history at the medical faculty in Nancy.^[1]

He described the genera Spinalia and Zygorhynchus. The mushroom genus Vuilleminia (Maire) is named after him.^[1] In 1889 he employed the term "antibiotic" when describing the substance pyocyanin.^[2]

In 1901 he transferred the yeast-like fungus that was named Saccharomyces hominis by Otto Busse and Saccharomyces neoformans by Francesco Sanfelice to the genus Cryptococcus due to its absence of ascospores.^[3][4] The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Prix Montagne for 1902.^[5]

In 1912 Vuillemin created the genus Beauveria to honor Jean Beauverie for his work the previous year on the type species - B. bassiana - transferring it from Botrytis.^[6]

Selected works

• Sur les homologies des mousses, 1886 – On homology regarding mosses.
• Les Tubercules radicaux des légumineuses, 1888 – On radical tubercules of legumes.
• Les champignons, 1912 – Fungi.
• Les animaux infectieux, 1929 – Infectious animals.
• Les Champignons parasites et les mycoses de l'homme, 1931 – Parasitic fungi and human mycoses.^[7]