National Museum of Natural History (France) people

Achille Joseph Urbain (9 May 1884 – 5 December 1957) was a French biologist born in Le Havre.

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.

Félix Joseph Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (15 May 1821 – 21 July 1901) was a French biologist, anatomist and zoologist born in Montpezat in the department of Lot-et-Garonne. He was a leading authority in the field of malacology.He studied medicine in Paris, and worked at Necker Hospital under Armand Trousseau (1801–1867). Later on, with Jules Haime (1824–1856), he travelled to the Balearic Islands to study marine life. In 1854 he returned to Paris as an assistant to Henri Milne-Edwards (1800–1885), and soon afterwards became a professor of zoology in Lille.
In 1865 he succeeded Achille Valenciennes (1794–1865) as chair of histoire naturelle des mollusques, des vers et des zoophytes at the National Museum of Natural History, France, and in 1868 became a professor at the University of Paris. In 1871 he was elected to French Academy of Sciences in the department of anatomy and zoology.

Lacaze-Duthiers is remembered for his study of the anatomy and developmental history of mussels, coral, snails, brachiopods and other invertebrate marine animals. In 1858 he discovered three mollusks in the Mediterranean that produced purple-blue dyes. One of the species, named murex trunculus, was the source of the distinctive purple-blue dye used by the ancient Phoenicians and Canaanites. He realised the dying process could be used to create a photographic image in purple-blue dye which he named the Mucographé process. Examples are preserved in the Sorbonne and the Royal Society in London.
He conducted pioneer exploration of marine life of coastal Algeria, that included scientific studies of coral. A result of this research was the publication of "Histoire naturelle du corail" (1864).He was the founder of two laboratories devoted to marine biology; the biological station at Roscoff in 1876, and the Arago laboratory at Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1882. A number of species bear his name, a few of them being: Strophomenia lacazei, Convoluta lacazi and Dileptus lacazei. In 1872 he founded the journal "Archives de zoologie expérimentale et générale" (Archives of Experimental and General Zoology).

Auguste Henri André Duméril (30 November 1812 – 12 November 1870) was a French zoologist. His father, André Marie Constant Duméril (1774–1860), was also a zoologist. In 1869 he was elected as a member of the Académie des sciences.
Duméril studied at the University of Paris, and in 1844 became an associate professor of comparative physiology at the university. From 1857, he was a professor of herpetology and ichthyology at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
In 1851, with his father, he published Catalogue méthodique de la collection des Reptiles. With zoologist Marie Firmin Bocourt (1819–1904), he collaborated on a project called Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale, a publication that was the result of Bocourt's scientific expedition to Mexico and Central America from 1864 to 1866. The section on reptiles is considered to be Dumeril's best written effort in the field of herpetology. Duméril died in 1870 during the siege of Paris, and Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale was continued by Bocourt, Léon Vaillant (1834–1914) and other scientists.
As part of the Collection des Suites à Buffon, he issued a two-volume ichthyological study titled Histoire naturelle des poissons, ou Ichtyologie générale (1865, 1870), research that complemented the works of Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) and Achille Valenciennes (1794–1865) by describing species not covered by the two famous naturalists. Duméril also conducted significant research involving the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum).

François Louis Henri Coutière (4 March 1869 in Saulzet – 23 August 1952 in Orvilliers) was a French zoologist, who specialized in the field of carcinology (crustaceans).
In 1895 he received his bachelor's degree in natural sciences, and during the following year, obtained his pharmacy degree 1st class. By way of a recommendation from Alphonse Milne-Edwards, he embarked on a zoological mission to the Red Sea in 1897 on behalf of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1899 he was named chef de service under Milne-Edwards in the laboratory of anatomic zoology at the École des hautes études.In 1899 he obtained his doctorate in natural sciences with a dissertation-thesis on the snapping shrimp family Alpheidae, and during the following year began teaching classes in zoology at the École supérieure de Pharmacie in Paris. From 1902 to 1937 he was a full professor of zoology at the school of pharmacy.In 1910 he was appointed president of the Société zoologique de France. The shrimp genera Coutierea and Coutierella (family Palaemonidae) commemorate his name, as do species with the epithet coutierei; e.g. Stenothoe coutieri (Chevreux, 1908).

Eugène Louis Bouvier (9 April 1856 in Saint-Laurent-en-Grandvaux – 14 January 1944 in Paris) was a French entomologist and carcinologist. Bouvier was a professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.

Jean Dorst (7 August 1924 – 8 August 2001) was a French ornithologist.
Dorst was born at Mulhouse and studied biology and paleontology at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the University of Paris. In 1947 he joined the staff of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. He succeeded Jacques Berlioz as chairman of Mammifères et Oiseaux in 1964, and was elected as director of the museum in 1975, resigning in 1985 to protest against government reforms of the museum.
Dorst was a member of the Académie des Sciences, one of the founders and second president of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos, president of the 16th International Ornithological Congress (IOC), and vice president of the Commission of Protection of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Dorst was one of the writers of the documentary Le Peuple Migrateur (Winged Migration), and the film is dedicated to him. A companion volume of photographs and essays was published in 2003.

Venceslas Victor Jacquemont (8 August 1801 – 7 December 1832) was a French botanist and geologist known for his travels in India.
Born in Paris on August 8, 1801, Victor Jacquemont was the youngest of four sons of Frédéric François Venceslas Jacquemont de Moreau (1757-1836) and Rose Laisné. He studied medicine and later took an interest in botany. His early travels took him around Europe. He was lightly built and capable of living on a very frugal diet.
After being invited by the Jardin des Plantes to collect plant and animal specimens from a country of his choice for 240 pounds a year, Jacquemont traveled to India leaving Brest in August 1828. He arrived at Calcutta on 5 May 1829. He went to Delhi on 5 March 1830 and went onwards towards the western Himalayas. He visited Amber in Rajputana, met with the Sikh Emperor Ranjit Singh at his capital of Lahore, and visited the kingdom of Ladakh in the Himalaya. He also visited Bardhaman (Burdwan) in Bengal in November 1829. He died of cholera in Bombay on 7 December 1832. The standard author abbreviation Jacquem. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.Several plants are named for him, including Vachellia jacquemontii, the Himalayan White Birch (Betula jacquemontii), the Indian Tree Hazel (Corylus jacquemontii), Afghan Cherry (Prunus jacquemontii), and the cobra lily or Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema jacquemontii).

Théodore André Monod (9 April 1902 – 22 November 2000) was a French naturalist, humanist, scholar and explorer.

Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (French: [adɔlf teodɔːʁ bʁɔ̃ɲaːʁ]) FRS FRSE FGS (14 January 1801 – 18 February 1876) was a French botanist. He was the son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart and grandson of the architect, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Brongniart's pioneering work on the relationships between extinct and existing plants has earned him the title of father of paleobotany. His major work on plant fossils was his Histoire des végétaux fossiles (1828–37). He wrote his dissertation on the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), an extant family of flowering plants, and worked at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris until his death. In 1851, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Brongn. when citing a botanical name.