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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CRE-DAH |
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CUVIER, GEORGES LEOPOLD CHRETIEN FREDERIC DAGOBERT, BARON (1769-1832) , French naturalist, was born on the 23rd of August 1769 at Montbeliard
paper , which was subsequently published in 1800 under the title Memoires sur les especes d'elephants vivants et fossiles. In 1798 was published his first separate work, the Tableau elementaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux, which was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the 1 cole duPantheon, and may be regarded as the foundation and first and general statement of his natural classification of the animal kingdom. In 1799 he succeeded L. J. M. Daubenton as professor of natural history in the College de France, and in the following year he published the Lecons d'anatomie comparee, a classical work, in the production of which he was assisted by A. M. C. Dumeril in the first two volumes, and by G. L. Duvernoy in three later ones. In 1802 Cuvier became titular professor at the Jardin des Plantes; and in the same year he was appointed commissary of the Institute to accompany the inspectors-general of public instruction. In this latter capacity he visited the south of France; but he was in the early part of 1803 chosen perpetual secretary of the National Institute in the department of the physical and natural sciences, and he consequently abandoned the appointment just mentioned and returned to Paris. He now devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiryone dealing with the structure and classification of the mollusca, the second with the comparative anatomy and systematic arrangement of the fishes, and the third with fossil mammals and reptiles primarily, and secondarily with the osteology of living forms belonging to the same groups. His papers on the mollusca began as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this branch were published in the Annales du museum between 1802 and 1815; they were subsequently collected as Memoires pour servir a l'histoire el d l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817. In the department of fishes, Cuvier's researches, begun in 18o1, finally culminated in the publication of the Histoire naturelle des poissons, which contained descriptions of 5000 species of fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and A. Valenciennes, its publication (so far as the former was concerned) extending over the years 1828--1831. The department of palaeontology dealing with the Mammalia may be said to have been. essentially created and established by Cuvier. In this region of investigation he published a long list
bear , the mastodon, the extinct species of elephant, fossil species of manatee and seals, fossil forms of crocodilians, chelonians, fishes, birds, &c. The results of Cuvier's principal palaeontological and geological investigations were ultimately given to the world in the form of two separate works. One of these is the celebrated Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupedes, published in Paris in 1812, with subsequent editions in 1821 and 1825; and the other is his Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe, published in Paris in 1825.But none of his works attained a higher reputation than his Regne animal distribue d'apres son organisation, the first edition of which appeared in four octavo
Apart from his own original
zoology and palaeontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official connected with public education generally; and much of this work appeared ultimately in a published form. Thus, in i8o8 he was placed by Napoleon
1811 and 1813) over commissions charged to examine the state of the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the Alps and the Rhine which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this subject were published by him. In his capacity, again, of perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of doges historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but he was the author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural sciences, the most important of these being the Rapport historique sur le progres des sciences physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810. Prior to the fall of Napoleon
See P. J. M. Flourens, Eloge historique de G. Cuvier, published as an introduction to the Eloges historiques of Cuvier; Histoire des travaux de Georges Cuvier (3rd ed., Paris, 1858) ; A. P. de Candolle, " Mort de G. Cuvier," Bibliotheque universelle (1832, 59, p. 442); C. L. Laurillard, " Cuvier," Biographie universelle, supp. vol. 61 (1836) ; Sarah Lee, Memoirs of Cuvier, translated into French by T. Lacordaire (1833). End of Article: CUVIER, GEORGES LEOPOLD CHRETIEN FREDERIC DAGOBERT, BARON (1769-1832) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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