French naturalists

Charles Victor Naudin (14 August 1815 in Autun – 19 March 1899 in Antibes) was a French naturalist and botanist.

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.

Dominique Alexandre Godron (25 March 1807 - 16 August 1880) was a French physician, botanist, geologist and speleologist born in the town of Hayange, in the département Moselle.
Godron studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg, and during his career distinguished himself in natural sciences as well as in the field of medicine. In 1854 he became dean and professor of natural history to the Faculty of Sciences at Nancy. Here he established a natural history museum and reorganized its botanical garden (now the Jardin Dominique Alexandre Godron, renamed in his honor).
Among his numerous writings were a publication on the flora of the Lorraine region of France called "Flore de Lorraine" (1843), and the three-volume "Flore de France", a work on flora native to France and Corsica that was co-written with botanist Jean Charles Marie Grenier (1808-1875). In addition to his botanical works, he published a number of studies in the field of ethnology.Before Mendel, he discovered the main features of hybridation. In "de l'Espece et des races dans les êtres organises" he also demonstrated that hybridization in the vegetal world was, against the dominant thinking at the time, similar to hybridization in the animal world. He finally demonstrated the unity of mankind in his book dedicated to our species.
In 1846, he was honoured by botanists Jean Baptiste Mougeot and Joseph Henri Léveillé who named Godronia, which is a genus of fungi in the family Helotiaceae. Then in 1927, William Webster Diehl and Edith Katherine Cash published Godroniopsis, which is also a genus of fungi in the family Helotiaceae.

Henri Biva (23 January 1848 – 2 February 1929) was a French artist, known for his landscape paintings and still lifes. He focused primarily on the western suburbs of Paris, painting outdoors in the plein-air tradition; his style ranging between Post-Impressionism and Realism with a strong Naturalist component. Biva's pictures are characterized by intricate strokes and a pure palette bathed with warm natural light (Biva devoted great attention to light effects). The artist was a member of the Société des Artistes Français and a Knight of the Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur).

Joseph Paul Gaimard (31 January 1793 – 10 December 1858) was a French naval surgeon and naturalist.

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

Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (10 February 1810 – 12 January 1892) was a French biologist.