French naturalist and explorer. Born in 1742 in Mâcon, Joseph Dombey qualified as a physician in 1767 from the medical school in Montpellier, where he studied under Antoine Gouan, the director of the botanical garden and one of the first French botanists to adopt the Linnean system of classification. With Gouan and his colleagues Ernest Cosson and Philibert Commerson, Dombey made botanical excursions in the region of Montpellier, and two trips into the Pyrenees, assembling a rich collection of meridional and alpine plants. At Dauphine he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom he presented with a herbarium of specimens as a token of friendship.

In 1772 he moved to Paris to study at the Jardin du Roi, and soon came to the attention of André Thouin, Bernard and Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, and Louis Guillaume Le Monnier, all of whom remarked on his talent and enthusiasm. On their recommendation, he was entrusted with a mission for the finance minister ARJ Turgot. With the agreement of Charles III of Spain, Dombey was to accompany the Spanish botanists Hipólito Ruiz and Jose Pavón, and the botanical illustrators Joseph Brunete and Isido Galvez, on an expedition to Peru, and collect such useful plants as could be cultivated in Corsica and Provence. He was also given two further tasks: to recuperate the documents left behind by Joseph de Jussieu in Lima (a delicate affair, politically), and to search for cinnamon, a request which came directly from the Spanish king, who hoped to break the Dutch monopoly on this valued spice.

The expedition left Cadiz in November 1777 and arrived in Callao in January 1778. From then until December 1781, the botanists worked from four bases: Lima, Chancay, Tarma, and Huánaco. In the latter, Dombey gathered valuable information on the cinchona tree. His first consignment in 1780 was captured at sea by the British, and the specimens sent to the British Museum, where they were retained despite subsequent claims by the French government. Because the money Dombey had been given was insufficient in a country where everything was sold by ounces of gold, on his return to Lima he was forced to practise medicine to recoup his losses and raise funds for further travels; a charitable man, he treated the poor for free.

The return journey had been planned via Quito and Cartagena, but the American War of Independence and the Indian rebellion inside Peru made this route unsafe; therefore, the Spanish government decided to change the itinerary and the expedition spent February 1782 to October 1783 in Chile. During his stay in Concepción, Dombey was instrumental in halting an outbreak of cholera, serving as physician-in-chief of the city until the epidemic had passed. He was then asked to report on the potential re-use of abandoned mercury mines in Jarilla and Coquimbo; while there he also studied the types of wood used to fire the ovens in mercury production and made notes on the economic value of indigenous plants such as those used locally for incense.

In April 1784, Dombey sailed at last for Europe, stopping en route in Brazil, where he collected for four months. On landing in Cadiz, half his collection was seized in customs by the Spanish government; the other half was released to him only on the promise that he would publish nothing until the return of his Spanish companions, who remained in Peru until 1788. The living plants in his collection all died in the custom houses.

Finally back in France, Dombey suffered from depression and ill health. He renounced botany and moved to Lyons, entrusting his herbarium to Buffon, who secured him an indemnity to pay off his debts and an annual pension from the government. Buffon in turn passed the specimens and manuscripts over to L'Héritier to publish and describe. Ultimately, however, almost all of the 1500 South American plants in Dombey's herbarium, of which more than 60 were new species, were described by Ruiz and Pavón in their Flora Peruviana.

In 1793 Dombey was granted his request to be sent on a mission to the United States. He left Le Havre in April 1794, but a storm forced him to break his voyage at Guadeloupe, which was then in the throws of revolution. Not long after setting sail again, his boat was taken by privateers, and he was imprisoned on Montserrat, where he died. His manuscripts on the plants of Peru and Chile were published posthumously by L'Héritier as Flore Perouviene (Paris, 1799), L'Herbier de Dombey Expliqué (Paris, 1811), and Observations de Dombey faites au Chili et au Perou (Paris, 1813). The genus Dombeya Cav. is named after him.

Sources:
C. Deschamps-Lang, "Joseph Dombey au Perou et au Chili, 1778-1784", inY. Laissus (ed), 1995, Les naturalistes français en Amérique du Sud XVIe.-XIXe. Siècles: 157-166
M.J. Mouton-Fontenille, 1803, Éloge de Joseph Dombey.