See also: Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne, Geoffroy, Saint-Hilaire

Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire , born the April 15th 1772 with Stamps and dead the June 19th 1844 with Paris, is a Naturaliste French.

His/her father Jean Gerard Geoffroy is lawyer attached to the Parliament of Paris and the young person Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire intends himself initially for an ecclesiastical career and follows studies to the college of Navarre to Paris. He has, as professor of Natural history, Mathurin Jacques Brisson. He attends several Scientifique S of his time: Rene Just Haüy, Antoine Lavoisier and Claude Louis Berthollet. It also follows the courses of Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton to the Collège de France and of Antoine-François Fourcroy to the Jardin of the king.

In March 1793, Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton, thanks to the intervention of Bernardin of Saint-Pierre, offers to him the station of trigger guard and assistant demonstrator to the cabinet of natural history, left vacant after the resignation of Bernard Lacépède. Following the law of June 1793, Geoffroy becomes one of the twelve professors of new the national Muséum of natural history and occupies the pulpit of Zoologie. The same year, it deals with the constitution of the menagerie of the Natural history museum.

In 1794, it starts a correspondence with Georges Cuvier. Little time after the recruiting of Vat as assistant to the Natural history museum of natural history, Geoffroy receives it in his house. They will sign together several memories of natural history of which one, presents the classification of the Mammifère S built on the idea of subordination of the characters, base of the system of classification of Vat.

It is in its article on the Histoire of the maki S or monkeys of Madagascar , written in 1795, that Geoffroy expresses for the first time his sights on the unit of the plan of organization of the living beings, design which will constantly be expressed in its later works.

In 1798, Geoffroy is selected to take part in the great scientific exhibition which accompanies Bonaparte in Egypt. During this voyage, it collects many zoological observations (in particular on the Reptile S and the Poisson S). It also takes share, in August 1801, with the opposition against the request of the Britanniques of the input of the collections gathered. In January 1802, Geoffroy goes back to Paris.

In 1804, it marries Pauline Brière de Mondetour.

He is elected member of the Academy of Science in September 1807. In March of the following year, Napoleon, which had already rewarded it by the cross for the Légion for honor, chooses it to visit the natural history musea of the Portugal in order to get collections of animals of the Brésil. Vis-a-vis the formidable opposition of the British , it succeeds in preserving them.

In 1809, the year of its return in France, he becomes professor of zoology to the Faculty of Science of Paris and dedicates himself entirely being studied of the anatomy.

In 1818, it makes appear, the first part of its famous anatomical Philosophie , the second will be published in 1822. In Natural history of the mammals , of 1819, it states that the bodies always preserve the same relations between them but also which it creates for itself no new body and which when a body develops that makes with the detriment of an other.

In 1827, it is charged to accompany by Marseilles to Paris the giraffe offered to Charles X by the Pasha with Egypt.

In 1830, Geoffroy seeks to apply his method to the Invertébré S. Geoffroy estimates that all the animals are formed of the same elements, of an equal number, with the same interconnections even if they differ in the face and form, the majority remaining in a constant order.

Its ideas as for the evolution are connected with the Transformisme Lamarck and lead it to face Cuvier, resolutely creationist, in front of the Academy of Science. One refers today to one of their more famous confrontations under the name of controversy of the crocodiles of Caen.

In order to find arguments, he studies the Tératologie (or study of the anomalies of the embryonic development).

He recognizes an action slow but indisputable medium on the evolution of the species, which requires a very long time.

He defines the concept of homology, which throws a bridge between the Embryologie and the Comparative anatomy.

In July 1840, Geoffroy becomes blind and sudden, a few months later, an attack which leaves it paralyzed. Weakening, it must resign of its pulpit to the Natural history museum in 1841 which his/her son Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire succeeds (1805-1861).

Several of its works are freely accessible, in facsimile and full text on CoLiSciences

External bond

• Armorial bearings of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.