Sister Marie Jean-Eudes, S.S.A., born Eugénie Tellier, (1897, Saint-Damien, Quebec—1978, Lachine, Quebec) was a Canadian botanist and a member of the Sisters of Saint Ann. She worked on the popularization of science and published several papers in the fields of biology, geology and botany.
Sister Jean-Eudes is considered a pioneer in the study of natural sciences. The Province of Quebec established a nature preserve named in her honor in 1992, due to her contributions to science.[1]
A former student of Brother Marie-Victorin Kirouac, F.S.C., between 1925 and 1931, she studied at the Botanical Institute of the University of Montreal. In 1943 she completed a master's degree in botany. Her thesis was entitled "La flore de Rawdon". As part of her research project she put together an herbarium of over 1,200 species.
In 1931 Sister Jean-Eudes became a coordinator of the Cercles des Jeunes Naturalistes division in the schools run by her congregation. In 1942 she became responsible for a museum which was maintained in St. Anne Convent, in Lachine, the motherhouse of her religious congregation. She re-organized it as a Natural History Museum. This collection was donated in the early 1970s to the Cité-des-Jeunes High School in Vaudreuil, Quebec, where her congregation was founded. In 1995 it was permanently housed in the Musée de la nature et des sciences in Sherbrooke.[2]
In 1963 Sister Jean-Eudes started working on a monograph about the "Cercles des Jeunes Naturalistes", which was published only in 1981, after her death.