Georges Vat

Biography

Origin

Native of a family Protesting E of Montbeliard, it is the reading of Buffon which will direct its life. After having studied with the college of Montbeliard, it is registered with the Academy Caroline of Stuttgart in Germany, where he is the pupil of the Botaniste Johann Simon von Kerner. It is there that it acquires the knowledge of the language and of the literature German are. It is then in charge of education in Normandy.

Normandy

It spends the turbid years of the French revolution in the Pays of Caux in Normandy, where it devotes its leisures to the study of the Natural history: collect Fossile S and comparison of the alive species. From this solitary work, he will deduce thereafter the Loi from correlation of the forms allowing the reconstitution of a skeleton starting from some fragments. Very early, it with the intuition of the need for a new classification of the animal kingdom.

Success in Paris

Its talents having been appreciated by Henri Alexandre Tessier (1741-1837), Agronomist, it is destined for Paris in 1795 and is pointed out soon, either by its courses, or in its writings. Its knowledge of autodidact and the originality of his methods makes it admit with the Botanical garden of Paris, where Jean-Claude Mertrud, then Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton, seeks her collaboration and introduce it with the Academy of Science.

It is successively named professor of natural history to the central schools, temporary of the pulpit of comparative anatomy with the Natural history museum, professor with the Collège de France, member of the Academy of Science where he is perpetual secretary for physical sciences in 1803. The same year, he Marie with the widow of the former farmer general Duvaucel, guillotine in year I. None of their four children survived, and their death was very painful for him. He becomes foreign member of the Royal Society on April 17th 1806.

A succession of honors lead it French Academy in 1818, with the peerage of France in 1831, while passing by the Council of State and the chancellery of the State education, without speaking about the academic distinctions coming from the whole world.

He becomes inspector of the studies, Co-adviser and chancellor of the University (1808), and fulfills several times the functions of large Master: he benefits from this position to support the teaching of the history and sciences. Named in 1814 to advise State, then president of the committee of the interior, it announces himself in this new career by a high capacity, but it montre too obliging towards the capacity and agree to give the responsability itself to support with the platform of unpopular measurements.

Its work

As naturalist, Cuvier rendered great services. It gave to the Zoologie a natural classification which it missed. It made make with the comparative anatomy an immense step by recognizing that there exists between all the bodies of the same animal a subordination such as knowledge of only one body, one can deduce that from all the others: it is what it called the Loi of correlation of the forms.

With the favor of this law, it could create a new world so to speak: having established by many observations that it had to exist on the surface of the sphere of the animals and the plants which disappeared today, it managed to rebuild these beings of which there remain hardly some formless remains and to classify them methodically.

Its considerable work did not enable him however to include/understand the interest of the Transformisme of Lamarck, against which it rose, and to guess the prospects for the evolutionism.

Vat represented the dominant scientific thought in France, in agreement with the religious spirit Catholique, and its influence was large. Its work remains of a remarkable scientific quality.

Lastly, it gave to the Géologie new bases, by providing the means of determining the seniority of the terrestrial layers by the nature of the remains which they contain. It is him, in particular, which baptized the period of the Jurassic of the secondary era (or Mesozoic ) in reference to the sedimentary layers in the Massif of the Jura, that it knew well.

It practiced the Actualisme or the Uniformitarisme (term employed by William Whewell in 1832: “The current shocks are the same ones as those of the past. ”), and it was in agreement with the ideas catastrophists and creationists.

In its work the Revolutions of the surface of the Earth (1825), Cuvier notes disappearances and the appearances of several species at the same time and admits local crises. Alcide Dessalines d' Orbigny was “cuviérin”.

Dominique Guillo will see in him the founder of a new Paradigme of the Social sciences, leading in right-hand side line to the Positivisme of Auguste Count and to the traditional sociology.

Pierre-Joseph van Beneden was of its pupils.

Principal publications

elementary Table of the natural history of the animals (1797-1798) Text in line
Lessons of comparative anatomy (5 volumes, 1800-1805), capital work which obtained in 1810 one of the decennial prices Texte in line
Essais on the mineralogical geography of the surroundings of Paris, with a geognostic chart and cuts of ground , with Alexandre Brongniart (1811)
the Animal kingdom distributed according to its organization, to be used as a basis for the natural history of the animals and introduction to the comparative anatomy (4 volumes, 1817) Text in line 2 3 4
Recherches on the fossil ossemens of quadrupeds, where one restores the characters of several species of animals which the revolutions of the sphere paroissent to have destroyed (4 volumes, 1812) Text on line 2 3 4
Mémoires to be used with the history and the anatomy of the molluscs (1817) Text in line
historical Éloges of the members of the Academy royal of sciences, read in the meetings of the royal Institute of France by Mr. Cuvier (3 volumes, 1819-1827) Text in line 1 2 3
Théorie of the ground (1821)
Discours on the revolutions of the surface of the sphere and on changes which they produced in the animal kingdom (1822). Republication: Christian Bourgeois, Paris, 1985. Text in line
History of the natural advances in knowledge since 1789 so far (5 volumes, 1826-1836)
Natural history of the fish (11 volumes, 1828-1848), continued by Achilles Valencian
History of the natural science since their origin until our days, among all known people, professed at the Collège de France (5 volumes, 1831-1845), written, annotated and published by Magdeleine of Saint-Acts Ttexte in line 2 3 4 5

Geogres Cuvier also collaborated in the Dictionnaire of the natural science (61 volumes, 1816-1845) and in the universal Biographie (45 volumes, 1843-18??).

Quotations

If the elephant had been a disappeared species, and that I laid out to study it only his fossil bones, never I could have imagined that it had a horn. - Correspondence .
The comparative anatomy teaches us that in any thing the human one resembles the animals Frugivore S and nothing with the carnivorous S. It is only by disguising the dead flesh returned more to tend by culinary preparations, that it is likely to be mastiquée and digested by the human one at which, of the kind, the sight of the meats raw and bleeding, does not excite the horror and the dislike. - Lesson of Comparative anatomy

Homages

Its name is registered on the Eiffel Tower.

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