Claude Sionnest

Claude Sionnest (Syonnest or Sionnet) is a Naturaliste and malacologist French, born with Lyon (the Rhone) in 1749 and dead the January 31st 1820.

Resulting from a family which had exerted for 2 centuries the trade of the pharmaceutical grocer, it very early moves towards the Natural science. After having served 4 years in the Infantry, it was named commander of battalion during Terror. After the 9 Thermidor Year II (July 27th 1794), it was named at the Town of Lyon and was in charge of the police force, before returning its functions to be devoted fully to its passions.

In the Year VI (1798), it is named physicist Entomologiste within the Company of health.

In the Year VIII (1800), it integrates the Company of Agriculture of Lyon and occupies the functions of treasurer whom it will fill during ten years.

It was interested in entomology and published several memories on the harmful insects with agriculture. Also Botanist, it particularly studied the Cryptogamie of which it left many new handwritten notes concerning the classifying systems of Dillen, Johannes Hedwig (1730-1799) or Beauvoir. He had also a vast mineralogical collection classified according to the Système of Hauy and tried a mineralogical description of the Département of the Rhone.

But it is especially the malacology which will hold all its attention. The many manuscripts which it left show that it had as a main concern to establish systematic correspondences of the various species current and fossil, terrestrial, fresh-water and marine, described and illustrated in the works of Geoffroy, Jean Louis Marie Poiret (1755-1834), Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), Jacques Philippe Raymond Draparnaud (1772-1804)… and others less famous.

He created his problem classifying system to arrange molluscs of his collection, very particular system which he opposed to that of his friend, Draparnaud. Its collection included/understood 62 species not appearing in the Natural history of terrestrial and fluviatile Molluscs of France of Draparnaud and was consulted by Gaspard Louis André Michaud (1795-1880) when it wrote the supplement with this work.

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