Max Vachon

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Max Vachon (born January 4, 1908 in Dijon ; died November 3, 1991 ) was a French arachnologist .

Study and job

Max Vachon first studied zoology at the University of Dijon . He began in 1932 at the Sorbonne under the arachnologist Jean-Robert Denis with a thesis on his dissertation on the reproduction and development of pseudoscorpions . Vachon visited the zoological laboratory of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle while preparing his dissertation . Shortly after his disputation , he accepted an assistant position there. In 1955 he became head of the facility, succeeding Jean-Louis Fage . He held this position until he retired in 1977.

research

Max Vachon has written more than 300 scientific publications. His first publication appeared in 1932 and dealt with the feeding behavior of book scorpions . His dissertation, published in 1938, formed the basis for further research on the morphology and ecology of pseudoscorpions for decades. Other of his publications dealt with topics such as ontogenesis, morphology, systematics and biogeography. In 1940 the Algerian Institute Pasteur an Fage approached Jean-Louis Fage with a request for a study on North African scorpions . A scorpion identification aid, whose stings are dangerous to humans, was needed to facilitate the production of antivenins . Fage turned the task over to Vachon because of lack of time. The resulting monograph was published in 1952 and is still considered a standard work today. In the following years Vachon wrote numerous other works on taxonomy, biology, embryology, cytogenetics, fluorescence and resistance to radiation of the scorpions.

With his last major publication, Max Vachon introduced trichobothriotaxic into the scorpion system in 1974 . Already at the beginning of his research he had discovered that the increase in the number of trichobothria between the individual development stages of the pseudoscorpions is constant. On the basis of the work of the American arachnologist Ralph V. Chamberlin , Vachon succeeded in identifying individual trichobothria over several developmental stages. He derived from the notation developed for pseudoscorpions a for the trichobothria of the scorpions. To this day, the number and position of the Trichobothria are important taxonomic features in the scorpion system.

Max Vachon was a member of numerous commissions and specialist committees, in particular the Center national de la recherche scientifique . For many years he acted as editor for the Bulletin du Museum national d'Histoire naturelle and the acarological journal Acarologia . He was president of the Académie des Sciences d'Outre-Mer and the Société zoologique de France , first president of the Center International de Documentation Arachnologique and honorary member of the British Arachnological Society and the American Arachnological Society .

Dedication names (selection)

Publications (selection)

  • Max Vachon: Études sur les Scorpions . Institut Pasteur d'Algerie, Algiers 1952.
  • Claude Junqua and Max Vachon: Les arachnides venimaux et leurs venins. État actuel des recherches . Académie Royale des sciences d'outre-mer, Brussels 1968.
  • Max Vachon, Georges Rousseau and Yves Laissus: Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Inédits, d'après les manuscrits conservé à la Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle de Paris . Masson, Paris 1972.
  • Max Vachon: La trichobothriotaxie en arachnologie . In: Bulletin du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Zoologie 1974, Series 3, Volume 140 (Zoologie 104), pp. 857-958, ZDB -ID 215137-6 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mark Judson: Max Vachon, 1908–1991 , p. 113.
  2. ↑ John L. Cloudsley-Thompson and Wilson R. Lourenço: On the Meaning of the Trivial Name of the Scorpion Buthus occitanus (Amoreux, 1789) with Notes on its Distribution and Variability . In: Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society 1998, No. 81, pp. 1-2, ISSN  0959-2261 .
  3. ^ Mark Judson: Max Vachon, 1908–1991 , p. 114.
personal data
SURNAME Vachon, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French arachnologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th January 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Dijon
DATE OF DEATH 3rd November 1991