Jean Pierre Mégnin (16 January 1828 – 31 December 1905) was a French army veterinarian and entomologist. He is best known for his work with dogs in the field of cynology. He also contributed to the field of forensic entomology. He led experiments which unveiled the eight distinct waves of insect succession on corpses exposed to air. Similarly, he showed two waves of insect succession on corpses that are buried.
Antoine-Fortuné Marion (10 October 1846 – 22 January 1900) was a French naturalist with interests in geology, zoology, and botany. He was also a competent amateur painter.
A school friend of Paul Cézanne's in Aix-en-Provence, Marion went on to become professor and director of the Natural History Museum in Marseille. Cézanne painted his portrait in 1866–1867 at the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan.
He received his higher education in Marseille, earning his arts and letters degree in 1866 and his degree in sciences in 1868. In 1878 he opened a marine laboratory with financial assistance provided by the city of Marseille, which led in 1882 to the building of the Marine Station of Endoume. In 1880 he became director of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Marseille.He was a good friend of Gaston de Saporta, with whom he collaborated on works in the field of botany. As a zoologist, his research included studies of segmented marine worms, free-living roundworms of the Mediterranean, nemerteans, rotifers, zoantharians, alcyonarians, parasites that affected crustaceans and investigations of the class Enteropneusta. As a result of his work in the fight against Phylloxera (an aphid-like pest), he was given awards by the French and foreign governments.He was a founder of the publication "Annales du Musée d'histoire naturelle de Marseille".His painting The Village Church now belongs to the Fitzwilliam Museum.
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).
Joseph Alexandre Laboulbène (25 August 1825 Agen – 7 December 1898, Paris) was a French physician and entomologist.
A friend of the entomologist Jean-Marie Léon Dufour (1780-1865), he studied medicine in the University of Paris and was awarded the title Docteur in 1854. He taught in the medical faculty until 1879.
Laboulbène was interested in harmful insects notably in the Order Diptera. The order of mushrooms Laboulbeniales, is dedicated to him, by Engler in 1898.In 1853, Laboulbenia which is a genus of fungi in the family Laboulbeniaceae, was named in his honour.
Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck (3 May 1809 – 16 July 1887) was a Belgian palaeontologist and chemist, born at Leuven.
He studied medicine in the university of his native town, and in 1831 he became assistant in the chemical schools. He pursued the study of chemistry in Paris, Berlin and Gießen, and was subsequently engaged in teaching the science at Ghent and Liège. In 1856 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the Liège University, and he retained this post until the close of his life.About the year 1835 he began to devote his leisure to the investigation of the Carboniferous fossils around Liège, and ultimately he became distinguished for his researches on the palaeontology of the Palaeozoic rocks, and especially for his descriptions of the molluscs, brachiopods, crustaceans and crinoids of the Carboniferous limestone of Belgium. In recognition of this work the Wollaston medal was awarded to him in 1875 by the Geological Society of London, and in 1876 he was appointed professor of palaeontology at Liège. In 1882, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.He was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1886.Publications:
Eléments de chimie inorganique (1839)
Description des animaux fossiles qui se trouvent dans le terrain Carbonifère de Belgique (1842–1844, supp. 1851)
Recherches sur les animaux fossiles (1847, 1873)See Notice sur LG de Koninck, by E Dupont; Annuaire de l'Aced. roy. de Belgique (1891), with portrait and bibliography.
Ambrosius Arnold Willem Hubrecht (2 March 1853, in Rotterdam – 21 March 1915, in Utrecht) was a Dutch zoologist.
Hubrecht studied zoology at Utrecht University with Harting and Donders, for periods joining Selenka in Leiden and later Erlangen, and Gegenbauer in Heidelberg. He graduated magna cum laude with Harting in 1874 with a study on nemertine worms. In 1875–1882 he worked at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden, where he was the curator of ichthyology and herpetology, and in 1882 became professor at Utrecht. In 1890–1891 he traveled in Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, where he made embryological studies, notably on the tarsier. He visited the United States in 1896 and 1907. Honorary degrees were conferred on him by Princeton University, the University of St Andrews, the University of Dublin, the University of Glasgow (LL.D 1901), and the University of Giessen.
Hubrecht´s most important work was in embryology and placentation of the mammals. In papers in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopial Science in 1883 and 1887 he put forth the theory—also held by Sir E. Ray Lankester—that the vertebrates originated in a Nemertine form, basing this on his discovery in the Nemertines of a continuous nerve sheath. The Descent of the Primates (1897) is the title under which were published his lectures at the sesquicentennial celebration at Princeton.
In 1883 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hubrecht founded the Institut Internationale d'Embryologie, today known as the International Society of Developmental Biologists.
Charles Joseph Gravier (4 March 1865, in Orléans – 15 November 1937, in Paris) was a French zoologist.
He initially taught classes at École normale (1883–85) in Orléans and at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, afterwards becoming a professor of natural history at the École normale (1887) in Grenoble. In 1893 he obtained his aggregation of natural sciences and in 1896 his PhD in sciences. Later he became first assistant to Edmond Perrier (1844–1921) at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, where from 1903 he served as an assistant to Louis Joubin (1861–1935). In 1917 he attained the chair of zoology (worms and crustaceans) at the museum.
Gravier is known for his research of Anthozoa (class containing sea anemones and corals). The genera Gravieria, Gravierella and Gravieropsammia are named after him, as are numerous marine species, including the Red Sea mimic blenny (Ecsenius gravieri).In 1923 he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and commander on 6 August 1937.
Louis Pierre Gratiolet (French: [ɡʁasjɔlɛ]; 6 July 1815 – 16 February 1865) was a French anatomist and zoologist who was a native of Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He succeeded Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805-1861) as professor of zoology to the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris.
Gratiolet is remembered for his work in neuroanatomy, physiognomy and physical anthropology. He did extensive research in the field of comparative anatomy, and performed important studies regarding the differences and similarities between human and various primate brains. He is also credited for introducing the demarcation of the brain's cortical surface into five lobes, (frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe and insular cortex).
With Paul Broca (1824-1880) he performed correlative studies of aphasia and the frontal lobe. Gratiolet was a vocal critic of Broca regarding the latter's belief that a larger brain equated to higher intelligence.
Félix Dujardin (5 April 1801 – 8 April 1860) was a French biologist born in Tours. He is remembered for his research on protozoans and other invertebrates.
Pierre Étienne Simon Duchartre (27 October 1811, Portiragnes – 5 November 1894, Meudon) was a French botanist.
He studied biology in Toulouse, where after graduation he worked as a teacher. From 1837 he taught classes in Fumel, several years later moving to Paris, where in 1848 he was accepted by the faculty of sciences. During the following year, he was appointed a professor of botany and plant physiology at the Institut agronomique in Versailles. In 1861 he attained the chair of botany at the Sorbonne.In 1854 he was co-founder of the Société Botanique de France, an institution in which he served as president on several separate occasions.In 1850 he experimented with sulfur as a remedy against powdery mildew, a fungus that had a serious negative impact on European grapes during the mid-19th century. The genus Duchartrea (family Gesneriaceae) was named in his honor by botanist Joseph Decaisne. He is the binomial author of many species from the botanical family Aristolochiaceae.