Vocation : Science : Biology

Victor van Straelen (14 June 1889 – 29 February 1964) was a Belgian conservationist, palaeontologist and carcinologist.
Van Straelen was born in Antwerp on 14 June 1889, and worked chiefly as a palaeontologist until his retirement in 1954.He was director of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences from 1925 to 1954. In 1926, he instigated the world's first gorilla sanctuary in what became the Parc National Albert (now Virunga National Park). In 1933, he was appointed head of the Institut des Parcs Nationaux du Congo Belge, and in 1948, he was on the executive committee at the foundation of the organisation which would become the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He was the first president of the Charles Darwin Foundation from its foundation in 1959 until his death in 1964.He was awarded a silver Darwin-Wallace Medal by the Linnean Society of London in 1958.

Eugène Louis Simon (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn lwi simɔ̃]; 30 April 1848 – 17 November 1924) was a French naturalist who worked particularly on insects and spiders, but also on birds and plants. He is by far the most prolific spider taxonomist in history, describing over 4,000 species.

Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmayer (February 10, 1857 – October 4, 1919) was Germany's first advocate of eugenics who, along with Alfred Ploetz, founded the German eugenics movement. Schallmayer made a lasting impact on the eugenics movement.

Georges Rousseau-Decelle (2 January 1878, in Roche-sur-Yon – 1965) was a French entomologist.
Rousseau-Decelle amassed a large collection of worldwide butterflies containing many rare species, notably in the genera Morpho and Ornithoptera. He was primarily interested in infraspecific variation.
Georges Rousseau-Decelle was a chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and a member of the Société entomologique de France.

Lucie Gabrielle Randoin (11 May 1888 – 13 September 1960) was a French biologist, nutritionist, and hygienist. She was made a commander of the Legion of Honour in 1958 and is known for her research on vitamins.

Charles Pérez (19 May 1873 in Bordeaux – 22 September 1952 in Paris) was a French zoologist best known for his research of marine invertebrates and insects. His father, Jean Pérez (1833-1914), was a zoology professor at Bordeaux, and his father's sister was married to Belgian malacologist Paul Pelseneer (1863-1945).
From 1898 to 1902, he was an agrégé préparateur of zoology at the École Normale Supérieure, obtaining his doctorate of sciences in 1902. Afterwards, he worked as a lecturer to the faculty of sciences in Bordeaux, where in 1904, he was appointed professor of zoology and animal physiology. In 1909 he returned to Paris, where he eventually became an associate professor at the Sorbonne.In 1919 he was named adjoint-director of the zoological station at Wimereux, and in 1921 became director of the laboratory at Roscoff. From 1921 onward, he was a professor of zoology at the Sorbonne. He was a member of several learned sciences, including the Académie des sciences (1935–52) and the Société zoologique de France (president 1924).

Jean-Pierre Morat (18 April 1846 – 25 July 1920) was a French physiologist born in Saint-Sorlin, department Saône-et-Loire.
He studied medicine at École de médecine de Lyon, traveling to Paris in 1873, where he presented his dissertation-thesis on bone marrow, "Contributions à l’étude de la moelle osseuse". He remained in Paris for three years, working in the laboratory of Claude Bernard (1813–1878), of whom, Morat became a devoted disciple. In Paris, he worked closely with veterinarian Henri Toussaint (1847–1890) and physiologist Albert Dastre (1844–1917). With Toussaint, he collaborated on "Les variations de l’état électrique des muscles" (Variations of the electrical state of muscles), and with Dastre, he undertook extensive research of the sympathetic nervous system. With Dastre, the "Dastre-Morat Law" is derived, a dictum which states that "the vasoconstriction of the capillaries of the body surface is usually accompanied by vasodilation of the internal vessels, especially of the viscera, and vice-versa".
Following his years spent in Paris, he became an instructor of physiology at the faculty of medicine in Lille. In 1882 he was appointed professor of physiology at the faculty of medicine in Lyon, a position he maintained until his retirement in 1916. In 1883 he was admitted to the Société de biologie, and in 1904 was elected as a correspondent to the Académie de Médecine. In 1916 he became a correspondent of the Académie des sciences.
Morat had a keen interest in the field of surgery, being credited for introducing a process of administering morphine and atropine to a patient prior to the administration of anesthesia. Among his better known writings was the six volume "Traité de physiologie" (1904), a work that was co-written with a former student of his, Maurice Doyon (1869–1934).