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Michel Adanson
Michel Adanson (7 April 17273 August 1806) was an 18th-century French botanist and naturalist who traveled to Senegal to study flora and fauna. He proposed a "natural system" of taxonomy distinct from the binomial system forwarded by Linnaeus. Personal history Adanson was born at Aix-en-Provence. His family moved to Paris in 1730. After leaving the Collège Sainte-Barbe he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. Réaumur and Bernard de Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. He attended lectures at the Jardin du Roi and the Collège Royal in Paris from 1741 to 1746. At the end of 1748, funded by a director of the Compagnie des Indes, he left France on an exploring expedition to Senegal. He remained there for five years, collecting and describing numerous animals and plants. He also collected specimens of every object of commerce, delineated maps of the country, made systematic meteorological and astronomical observations, and prepared grammars and dictiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. A former capital of Provence, it is the subprefecture of the arrondissement of Aix-en-Provence, in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The population of Aix-en-Provence is approximately 145,000. Its inhabitants are called ''Aixois'' or, less commonly, ''Aquisextains''. History Aix (''Aquae Sextiae'') was founded in 123 BC by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gave his name to its springs, following the destruction of the nearby Gallic oppidum at Entremont. In 102 BC its vicinity was the scene of the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, where the Romans under Gaius Marius defeated the Ambrones and Teutones, with mass suicides among the captured women, which passed into Roman legends of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his '' Histoire Naturelle'' during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death. Ernst Mayr wrote that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century".Mayr, Ernst 1981. ''The Growth of Biological Thought''. Cambridge: Harvard. p 330 Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology, and he expanded Linnaean taxonomy by grouping classes into phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into the classification. Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his ''Essay on the Theory of the Earth'' (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events. In this way, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Institute
The (; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the Académie Française. It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute manages approximately 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and châteaux open for visit. It also awards prizes and subsidies, which amounted to a total of over €27 million per year in 2017. Most of these prizes are awarded by the institute on the recommendation of the . History The building was originally constructed as the Collège des Quatre-Nations by Cardinal Mazarin, as a school for students from new provinces attached to France under Louis XIV. The inscription over the façade reads "JUL. MAZARIN S.R.E. CARD BASILICAM ET GYMNAS F.C.A M.D.C.LXI", attesting that Mazarin ordered its construction in 1661. The Institut de France was established on 25 October 1795, by the National Convention. On 1 January 2018, Xavier Darcos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transmutation Of Species
Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory, and other 18th and 19th century proponents of pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas included Denis Diderot, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, Robert Grant, and Robert Chambers, the anonymous author of the book ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation''. Opposition in the scientific community to these early theories of evolution, led by influential scientists like the anatomists Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, and the geologist Charles Lyell, was intense. The debate over them was an important stage in the history of evolutionary thought and influenced the subsequent reaction to Darwin's theory. Terminology Transmutation was one of the names commonly used for evolution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral replication, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of DNA repair#DNA damage, damage to DNA (such as pyrimidine dimers caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation), which then may undergo error-prone repair (especially microhomology-mediated end joining), cause an error during other forms of repair, or cause an error during replication (DNA repair#Translesion synthesis, translesion synthesis). Mutations may also result from Insertion (genetics), insertion or Deletion (genetics), deletion of segments of DNA due to mobile genetic elements. Mutations may or may not produce detectable changes in the observable characteristics (phenotype) of an organism. Mutations play a part in both normal and abnormal biological processes including: evolution, cancer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. Lamarck fought in the Seven Years' War against Prussia, and was awarded a commission for bravery on the battlefield. Posted to Monaco, Lamarck became interested in natural history and resolved to study medicine. Packard (1901), p. 15. He retired from the army after being injured in 1766, and returned to his medical studies. Lamarck developed a particular interest in botany, and later, after he published the three-volume work ''Flore françoise'' (1778), he gained membership of the French Academy of Sciences in 1779. Lamarck became involved in the Jardin des Plantes and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788. When the French National Assembly founded the Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The American Naturalist
''The American Naturalist'' is the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society of Naturalists, whose purpose is "to advance and to diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences." It was established in 1867 and is published by the University of Chicago Press. The journal covers research in ecology, evolutionary biology, population, and integrative biology. , the editor-in-chief is Daniel I. Bolnick. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal had a 2020 impact factor of 3.926. History The journal was founded by Alpheus Hyatt, Edward S. Morse, Alpheus S. Packard Jr., and Frederick W. Putnam at the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. The first issue appeared in print dated March 1867."American Naturalist," in International Magazine Co., ''Periodicals,'' vol. 1, no. 1 (October-December 1917), pg. 5. In 1878 the journal was for sale and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conway Zirkle
Conway Zirkle (October 28, 1895 – March 28, 1972) was an American botanist and historian of science. Zirkle was professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He was highly critical of Lamarckism, Lysenkoism and Marxian biology.Joravsky, David. (1960). ''Evolution, Marxian Biology and the Social Scene by Conway Zirkle''. ''Isis''. Vol. 51, No. 3. pp. 348-353. Selected publications Books *''The Beginnings of Plant Hybridization'' (1935) *''Death of a Science in Russia, the Fate of Genetics as Described in "Pravda" and Elsewhere'' (1949) *''Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene'' (1959) *''The Evolution of Biology'' (1964) Papers *Zirkle, Conway. (1935). ''The Inheritance of Acquired Characters and the Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis''. ''American Naturalist'' 69: 417-445. *Zirkle, Conway. (1936). ''Further Notes on Pangenesis and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters''. ''American Naturalist'' 70: 529-546. *Zirkle, Conway. (1941). ''Natural Selection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inheritance Of Acquired Characters
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance. The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity. Introductory textbooks contrast Lamarckism with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin's book ''On the Origin of Species'' gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse, as Lamarck had done, and his own concept of pangenesis similarly implied soft inheritance. Many researchers from the 1860s onwards attempted to find evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, but th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Academy Of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is one of the earliest Academies of Sciences. Currently headed by Patrick Flandrin (President of the Academy), it is one of the five Academies of the Institut de France. History The Academy of Sciences traces its origin to Colbert's plan to create a general academy. He chose a small group of scholars who met on 22 December 1666 in the King's library, near the present-day Bibliothèque Nationals, and thereafter held twice-weekly working meetings there in the two rooms assigned to the group. The first 30 years of the Academy's existence were relatively informal, since no statutes had as yet been laid down for the institution. In contrast to its Bri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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