Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
Henri Marie de Blainville Ducrotay ( born September 12, 1777 Arques -la- Bataille, near Dieppe, † May 1, 1850 in Paris) was a French zoologist and anatomist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Blainv. ".
Life and work
Blainville was a student of the mainly visited by aristocratic pupils, run by Benedictine monks Military School of Beaumont -en-Auge (Calvados ) and was destined for a military career. As a result of the French Revolution, the school was disbanded, and Blainville returned to his parents. To 1794, he attended the drawing school of Rouen.
In 1796 he moved to Paris to study painting and entered the studio of the history painter Vincent. As a visitor physical lectures at the Collège de France, he discovered his interest in science and decided to study natural history and becoming a professor. He was an avid visitor of the lectures of the naturalist Georges Cuvier, studied anatomy and a doctorate in 1806 as a doctor of medicine.
As a result, he was mainly concerned with reptiles. His research in this area reached the attention of Cuvier, who received him in his lab. At times, he represented this in lectures at the Collège de France and the Paris Athénée. In 1812 he was awarded after a competition the chair of anatomy and zoology of the Paris Faculté des Sciences, where he was supported by Cuvier active. Nevertheless, they became alienated in their lives greatly from one another, the relationship even led to an open hostility: Cuvier quoted Blainville no longer in his work, and Blainville hinted in lectures that Cuvier's work was worth next to nothing.
De Blainville in 1825 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences as a successor to the Comte de La Cepede. After the death of Jean -Baptiste Lamarck the Chair of Natural History at the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle was, the previously covered the Zoology of all invertebrates, shared. De Blainville received in 1830 the chair of " mollusks, worms and zoophytes ."
Two years later, after the death of Cuvier, he was appointed Professor of Comparative Anatomy, which he kept for 18 years. He proved to be a worthy successor of his great teacher. In 1834 he coined the term paleontology founded by Cuvier science. His place in the chair of mollusks, worms and zoophytes took Achille Valenciennes ( 1794-1865 ).
De Blainville died of a stroke when he was about to leave with a train of the Chemin de Fer de Paris Rouen towards Dieppe.
The Blainville 's beaked whale, which he described in 1817, was named after him.
Works (selection)
- Prodrome d'une nouvelle distribution du règne animal, 1816
- Ostéographie ou description iconographique comparée you squelette et du système dentaire of mammifères récents et fossil, 1839-1864 (unfinished)
- Faune française, 1821-1830
- Cours de physiology générale et comparée, professed à la Faculté des Sciences de Paris, lecture notes, ed. by Henry Hollard, 1833 ( digitized Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3)
- Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie, 1825-1827 ( digitized )
- Manuel d' actinologie ou de zoophytologie, 1834 ( digitized Vol 1, Vol 2)
- Histoire des sciences de l' organization et de leurs for progress, comme base de la philosophie, lecture notes, ed. by T. L. M. Maupied, 1845
- Sur les Principes de la zooclassie, ou de la Classification des animaux, 1847