Geoffroy_Saint-Hilaire,_Isidore

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isidore (1805-1861), French zoologist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris on the 16th of December 1805. In his earlier years he showed an aptitude for mathematics, but eventually he devoted himself to the study of natural history and of medicine, and in 1824 he was appointed assistant naturalist to his father. On the occasion of his taking the degree of doctor of medicine in September 1829, he read a thesis entitled Propositions sur la monstruosité, considérée chez l’homme et les animaux; and in 1832-1837 was published his great teratological work, Histoire générale et particulière des anomalies de l’organisation chez l’homme et les animaux, 3 vols. 8vo. with 20 plates. In 1829 he delivered for his father the second part of a course of lectures on ornithology, and during the three following years he taught zoology at the Athénée, and teratology at the École pratique. He was elected a member of the academy of sciences at Paris in 1833, was in 1837 appointed to act as deputy for his father at the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in the following year was sent to Bordeaux to organize a similar faculty there. He became successively inspector of the academy of Paris (1840), professor of the museum on the retirement of his father (1841), inspector-general of the university (1844), a member of the royal council for public instruction (1845), and on the death of H.M.D. de Blainville, professor of zoology at the faculty of sciences (1850). In 1854 he founded the Acclimatization Society of Paris, of which he was president. He died at Paris on the 10th of November 1861.

Besides the above-mentioned works, he wrote: Essais de zoologie générale (1841); Vie ... d’Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1847); Acclimatation et domestication des animaux utiles (1849; 4th ed., 1861); Lettres sur les substances alimentaires et particulièrement sur la viande de cheval (1856); and Histoire naturelle générale des règnes organiques (3 vols., 1854-1862), which was not quite completed. He was the author also of various papers on zoology, comparative anatomy and palaeontology.

* * *