Georges Cuvier
Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron de Cuvier (actually Jean- Léopold- Frédéric Cuvier Nicholas, born August 23, 1769 in Montbéliard, † May 13, 1832 in Paris) was a French naturalist.
- 5.1 Literature
- 5.2 Notes and references
Life
Georges Cuvier was the son of Jean Georges Cuvier (1716-1795) a former lieutenant of a Swiss regiment and Anne- Catherine Clémence Chatel ( 1736-1792 ). He was baptized on the name Jean- Léopold- Frédéric Nicholas, later, the first name Dagobert has been added yet. Henceforth took the name of his elder brother Cuvier Georges Charles Henri (1765-1767) as the sole name. The zoologist Frédéric Cuvier was his younger brother.
Already in his childhood, he read the complete works of Georges- Louis Leclerc de Buffon, and laid at the age of twelve years of his first natural history collection. From 1784 to 1788 Cuvier studied at the Charles School in Stuttgart, where he took courses mainly administrative, legal and economic sciences. During this time he became friends with Carl Friedrich Kiel Meyer, from whom he learned the dissection.
In 1787 he was appointed Chevalier ( Knight dt ), which allowed him access to high society. After graduating from the High School Charles Cuvier was then for eight years employment as a private tutor to Count d' Héricy in Normandy. In his spare time he devoted himself to natural history studies in which he examined plants, seabirds and marine animals. Henri -Alexandre Tessier (1741-1837) and Étienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire recommended to appoint Cuvier at the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle in Paris, in 1795 he became a member of the Société d' histoire naturelle. Hilaire, who was Professor of "mammals, cetaceans, birds, reptiles and fish ", followed in 1795 this recommendation. In the same year Cuvier was a member of the newly founded Institut de France. During caused by the Egyptian campaign absence Cuvier Geoffroy won among the zoologists of the Museum of influence. In 1800 he became professor of zoology, and in 1803 secretary of the Physical Sciences at the Collège de France. On April 17, 1806 took him to the Royal Society as a member. Commissioned by Napoleon, he reorganized the academic institutions in Italy, the Netherlands and southern Germany and was honored for his achievements in 1811 with the Order of Chevalier de la Légion d' Honneur. In 1814 he was appointed to the Conseil d' État. Shortly before his death, he rose to become a peer of France.
1804 married Cuvier the Davaucelle widow who brought four children into the marriage and with whom he had four more children. Georges Cuvier died in 1832 from the effects of cholera infection. He was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Work
Georges Cuvier regarded as a scientific founder of paleontology and comparative anatomy made to a research discipline. He examined the anatomy of various creatures and compared systematically all the similarities and differences. These studies enabled him to derive from the existence of some bones that form other bones and associated muscles. So He finally succeeded in the reconstruction of a carcase of only a few parts.
For Cuvier's students included Alcide Dessalines d' Orbigny, Achille Valenciennes, Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim, Henri Marie de Blainville Ducrotay Franco Andrea Bonelli and.
His investigations of about 1803 dealt with particularly
For the third area Cuvier published a flurry of papers that document his extraordinary powers of observation and his precise conclusions. Through his studies of the Paris Basin geognostical he first came on the idea that alternately floods of freshwater and seawater must have changed the Earth's surface. Summaries of this work are the Recherches sur les ossements fossil de quadrupèdes (German studies of fossil bones of quadrupeds 1812 ) and the Discourse on Révolutions de la surface du globe (German discourse about the changes the Earth's surface 1825). In his four-volume work Le règne animal distribue d'après son organization (Eng. The animal kingdom on the design divided in 1817 ) he divided the animal kingdom into four immutable large groups, which he called vertebrates ( Vertebrata ), molluscs ( Mollusca ), radiation Animals ( Radiata ) and arthropods ( Articulata ) designated, and which he then assigned one each with its own basic blueprint. His conscientious investigations of the layer sequences and fossils contained in them, led to the proof that living things can die ( and all species). This was basically still disputed by Jean -Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire.
As a collector of natural history objects, as a systematic researchers, teachers and education policy, he was equally important. The school system and the Protestant Church in France owe him an extraordinary amount.
Catastrophism
Cuvier was long regarded as the most famous proponent of catastrophism ( Kataklysmentheorie ), therefore, was repeated major disasters destroyed much of the living things in Earth and emerged from the remaining species in subsequent phases of new life. In 1808 Cuvier affiliated with the French naturalist Alexandre Brongniart the geological stratification in the Paris Basin ( older Cenozoic or Tertiary). They studied the fossils in the individual layers of the earth. They discovered a series of seven fossil faunas, each fauna of a particular layer was replaced in the subsequent layer of a different fauna and so disappeared. Between each of the superimposed following terrestrial fossil faunas but now lying layers, the marine mollusks had, so that thus alternated freshwater and saltwater sediments.
Cuvier concluded that these gaps had to be an indication of global catastrophes. He speculated that the ocean has spread from the north in the direction of the Paris Basin, thereby extinguished the land mammals and marine organisms had brought in the sequence. After the retreat of the sea again appeared land mammals. Cuvier generalized that these global disasters in the history of the earth again and again destroyed the lives and had subsequently led to a new beginning. He was a child of the French Enlightenment, dogmatic and theological theses within the natural sciences would have been anathema to him. The legend, Cuvier did after each disaster postulated a new creation by God, was spread by his opponent Charles Lyell. This assertion can be demonstrated with any of the many publications Cuvier. Equally untenable is the insinuation that Cuvier had still believed in an oriented on biblical notions period of Earth's history.
Cuvier used his superior knowledge of anatomy to ideally complement missing fossilized bones for a total skeleton. His discovery of a Faunenschnitts based on fossils combined with his rejection of the gradualist theory of evolution by Jean Baptiste Lamarck.
The Paris Academy dispute
The most famous scientific opponents Cuvier was Geoffroy Saint -Hilaire, in which he had started as an assistant. Became famous for the Paris Academy dispute of 1830, in which not only the catastrophe theory played a role, but also the question of whether the natural history follow a uniform plan ( Saint- Hilaire ) or more fundamentally different ( Cuvier ).
Cuvier was a long time due to the attacks of Lyell and his rejection of the theory of continuous- evolution ( gradualism ), regarded as backward, but the theory of evolution was still controversial among Cuvier's scientific contemporaries. Today is undisputed that in addition to the gradual change and catastrophic events in the history of life were crucial - such as the globe for seamless disaster off about 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary, which is blamed for the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic.
Honors
Georges Cuvier is listed among the 72 names of prominent persons on the Eiffel Tower. The lunar crater Cuvier and the asteroid ( 9614 ) Cuvier are named after him. The reptile species Anolis cuvieri, Bachia cuvieri cuvieri and Oplurus and the mammalian Proechimys cuvieri are also named after Georges Cuvier. The birds Regulus cuvieri, Phaeochroa cuvierii and Ramphastos cuvieri tucanus are named after him or his brother Frédéric either. In 1820 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.
Writings (selection )
- Mémoire sur la structure et sur les internal external et des animaux affinités auxquels on a donné le nom de ver In: La Decade Philosophique, litteraire et politique. Vol 5, H. 40 (29 May 1795), pp. 385-396 ( digitized ).
- Élémentaire Tableau de l' histoire naturelle des animaux. Paris 1798.
- Leçons d' anatomie comparée. 5 volumes. Paris 1798-1805 ( German: . Lectures on comparative anatomy, Volume 1 and 2, Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1801-1802; band 1-4, grief, Leipzig, 1809-1810 ); 2nd edition. 8 volumes. Crochard, Paris 1835-1846.
- Memoires pour servir a l' histoire et a l' anatomie of Mollusks. Deter Ville, Paris 1817 ( digitized ).
- Le règne animal; distribue d'après son organization; pour servir de base à l' histoire naturelle des animaux et d' introduction à l' anatomie comparée. 4 volumes. Paris 1817 ( German: The animal kingdom, arranged according to its organization: as the basis of the natural history of animals and an introduction to comparative anatomy 6 volumes Brockhaus, Leipzig from 1831 to 1843. . ).
- Recherches sur les ossemens fossil ou l' on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs animaux dont les Révolutions you détruit globe ont les espèces. 4 volumes. Dufour et d' Ocagne, Paris 1812; 4th edition. 12 volumes. Paris from 1835 to 1837.
- Discourse on Révolutions de la surface du Globe, et sur les produits ont chan gemens qu'elles dans le règne animal. Dufour et d' Ocagne, Paris 1825 ( German: Cuvier's views of the primeval world Weber, Bonn 1822 The upheavals of the earth's crust in scientific and historical relationship 2nd Edition 2 volumes Weber, Bonn 1830.. .. ).