French botanist who led a research mission from the Paris Museum of Natural History to Brazil. Antoine Guillemin (as he was known) was born in Pouilly-sur-Saône and was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Dijon in 1812. After two years he moved to Geneva, where he studied botany under A-P. de Candolle. He later took up a position as curator of the Delessert herbarium and library in Paris and in 1827 began work at the Paris Museum of Natural History. His career progressed after he received his PhD in 1832 and he became assistant naturalist ('aide-naturaliste') at the museum. Around this time he organised an expedition to Brazil to study the experimental cultivation of tea. In Brazil (1838-1839) he met the German botanist Ludwig Riedel of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro and they collected plants together. The first set of Guillemin's collections from Brazil are at the University of Dijon, though most of his types are at Paris, which accessioned in excess of 1,000 of his specimens in 1839. From 1834 until his death Guillemin was editor of the Annales des Sciences Naturelles Botanique, prior to which he co-authored the Florae Senegambiae Tentamen (1830-1833) with colleagues at the Delessert herbarium. He is also remembered for Zephyritis Taïtensis, the first enumeration of the plants of Tahiti. The genus Guilleminea Kunth is named after him. He died in Montpellier in 1842.

Sources:
Anon., 1842, Flora, 25: 256
Anon., 1910, Journal of the Royal Society NSW, 44: 150-151.