Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville

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Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville

Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (born September 12, 1777 in Arques-la-Bataille near Dieppe , † May 1, 1850 in Paris ) was a French zoologist and anatomist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Blainv. ".

Live and act

Blainville was a student of the military academy of Beaumont-en-Auge (Calvados), which was mainly attended by noble students and led by Benedictine monks, and was destined for a military career. As a result of the revolution , the school was closed and Blainville returned to his parents. Around 1794 he attended the drawing school in Rouen .

In 1796 he moved to Paris to study painting and entered the studio of the history painter François-André Vincent . While attending physics lectures at the Collège de France , he discovered his interest in science and decided to study natural history and become a professor. He was an avid visitor to the lectures of the naturalist Georges Cuvier , studied anatomy and received his doctorate in medicine in 1806.

As a result, he mainly dealt with reptiles. His research in this area caught the attention of Cuvier, who took him into his laboratory. At times he represented them at lectures at the Collège de France and at the Paris Athénée . In 1812, after a competition, he was given the chair for anatomy and zoology at the Paris Faculté des Sciences ( Sorbonne ), with Cuvier actively supporting him. Nevertheless, in the course of their lives they became greatly estranged from one another, the relationship even culminating in open hostility: Cuvier no longer quoted Blainville in his work, and Blainville gave lectures to suggest that Cuvier's work was worth next to nothing.

In 1825, de Blainville became a member of the French Académie des Sciences as the successor to Bernard Germain Lacépède . After the death of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , his chair for natural history at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle , which previously covered the zoology of all invertebrates , was shared. De Blainville received the chair for "Mollusks, Zoophytes and Worms" in 1830.

Two years later, after Cuvier's death, he was given the chair of comparative anatomy , which he held for 18 years. He turned out to be a worthy successor to his great teacher. In 1825 he coined the term paleontology for the science founded by Cuvier. Achille Valenciennes (1794–1865) took his place on the chair for molluscs , zoophytes and worms .

De Blainville died of a stroke when he was about to leave Paris on a train from the Chemin de Fer de Rouen to Dieppe. He found his final resting place in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (Division 54). In 1854, the physiologist Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens gave a noteworthy eulogy to Ducrotay de Blainville at the annual meeting of the Acadèmie des Sciences .

In Germany it is best known as the name of the "copper crooked fish" Palaeoniscum freilebeni , one of the oldest fossils that have been depicted again and again.

Honors

In 1818 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 1819 of the American Philosophical Society .

The Blainville beaked whale , which he described in 1817, was named after him.

Fonts

  • Prodrome d'une nouvelle distribution du règne animal , 1816
  • Sur les Ichthyolites, les Poisons Fossiles; Article extrait du Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle , vol. 28, Abel Lange, 91 pp., 1818
  • Ostéographie ou description iconographique comparée du squelette et du système dentaire des mammifères récents et fossiles , 1839–1864 (unfinished)
  • Faune française , 1821-1830
  • Cours de physiologie générale et comparée, professé à la Faculté des sciences de Paris , lecture transcripts, ed. by Henry Hollard, 1833 ( Gallica )
  • Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie , 1825–1827 ( Gallica )
  • Manuel d'actinologie ou de zoophytologie , 1834 ( Gallica )
  • Histoire des sciences de l'organisation et de leurs progrès, comme base de la philosophie , lecture transcripts, ed. by TLM Maupied, 1845
  • Sur les Principes de la zooclassie, ou de la Classification des animaux , 1847

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
  2. ^ Member History: Henri M. Ducrotay de Blainville. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 4, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Blainville, Henri Marie Ducrotay de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French zoologist and anatomist
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1777
PLACE OF BIRTH Arques-la-Bataille near Dieppe
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1850
Place of death Paris