Count Hippolyte François Jaubert (28 October 1798 – 5 December 1874) was a French politician and botanist. Jaubert was born in Paris, the son of François Hippolyte Jaubert (a commissioner of the French Navy, killed at the Battle of the Nile in 1798) and Rosalie Mélanie Cheminade (a landowner at Givry, in the commune of Cours-les-Barres in the department of Cher, who died in 1817). He was adopted by his uncle, Count François Jaubert (1758–1822), Councilor of State and governor of the Bank of France under the First Empire. Although Jaubert was passionate about natural history, his uncle made him study law, while allowing him to study with René Desfontaines (1750–1831) and Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836). He was called to the bar in 1821, but shortly afterwards his uncle died, Jaubert inheriting the title of Count and an immense fortune. With this money he was able to buy large landholdings in Berry, ten blast furnaces in the departments of Nièvre and Cher (where his mother's family originated), and become director of the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (Paris–Orléans railway company), all the while concentrating on botany and politics. He married Marie Boigues (died 1864), sister of Louis Boigues, a manufacturer at Imphy and founder of the town of Fourchambault. They had two children: Louis Hippolyte Francois Jaubert, who became prefect of the department of Sarthe; Claire Mélanie Jaubert, who became by her marriage Countess Benoist d'Azy. In 1821 Jaubert toured Auvergne and Provence with his friend Victor Jacquemont (1801–1832), studying the flora and geology of those regions. That same year, together with Karl Sigismund Kunth (1788–1850), Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876), Adrien-Henri de Jussieu (1797–1853), Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemin (1796–1842) and Achille Richard (1794–1852), he founded the short-lived Natural History Society of Paris, which financed an expedition to Asia of several naturalists, among them Pierre Martin Rémi Aucher-Éloy (1793–1838). He joined the conseil général of Cher in 1830, and became its president. He entered national politics at the time of the July Revolution of 1830, and was elected six times to the Chamber of Deputies of France, from 1831 to 1842. Initially close to the Doctrinaires, he quickly attached himself to prime minister Adolphe Thiers, and served in the latter's second administration as Minister of Public Works from 1 March to 28 October 1840. During this period, the conservative deputy for Versailles, Ovide de Rémilly, put forward an old proposal