Pierre Belon

Pierre Belon (* 1517 in Souletière to Le Mans, † 1564 in Paris ) was a French naturalist and botanist. His name is often rendered with Peter ( Peter ) Bellon (ius ).

Life

Belon studied medicine at the University of Wittenberg in 1540 at Valerius Cordus, 1542 in Paris, 1544 in Padua. In the years 1547-1549 he traveled with the support of the Catholic Church and in the service of Cardinal de Tournon through Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean islands, through the Near East and Egypt. In 1550, he returned with de Tournon back to Rome. He then took another trip to London and Oxford for evaluating the travel results that he wrote in Paris.

Between 1550 and 1553 he completed his medical studies in Paris. After that was the personal physician in the service of the Earl of Vielleville and was eventually murdered in 1564 in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

Belon was famous for his numerous geological, botanical and zoological observations, particularly through his writings to fish and birds. He is considered the co-founder of comparative morphology. He described plant in the Middle East and watched as the first similarities (' homologies ' ) in the basic blueprint of the skeleton of vertebrates. So he gave a significant impetus for the development of evolutionary thought. Belon led the cedar in France and founded two botanical gardens.

Ehrentaxon

Charles Plumier named in his honor, the genus of the plant family Bellonia the Gesneriad ( Gesneriaceae ). Linnaeus later took the name.

Works

• Les observations de plusieurs choses singularités & memorables, trouvées en Grece, Asie, Judee, Égypte, Arabie, & autres pays Etranges, redigees en trois livres. Revues other chef, & de augmentees figures, avec une nouvelle table de toutes les auxiliary materials traitées s iceux (Paris, 1553)
• L' histoire de la nature of oyseaux (Paris, 1555)