Antoine Étienne Renaud Augustin Serres (12 September 1786,

Clairac Clairac () is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France. People Clairac is the birthplace of the 17th century poet and dramatist Théophile de Viau and of François de Labat. See also *Communes of the Lot-et-Garonne d ...

– 22 January 1868,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a French physician and embryologist. He was among the first to formulate the

recapitulation theory The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an a ...

Background

Étienne Serres was the son of Jean Jacques Serres, "maître chirurgien" and Marie Roussel. In 1810 Serres received his medical doctorate in Paris, and afterwards worked at the

Hôtel-Dieu de Paris In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu ( en, hostel of God) was originally a hospital for the poor and needy, run by the Catholic Church. Nowadays these buildings or institutions have either kept their function as a hospital, the one in Paris b ...

and the Hôpital de la Pitié. In 1841 he was chosen president of the French Academy of Sciences. From 1850 to 1868 he was chair of comparative anatomy at the

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

. Serres' scientific work was influenced by the theories of

Lorenz Oken Lorenz Oken (1 August 1779 – 11 August 1851) was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss (german: Okenfuß) in Bohlsbach (now part of Offenburg), Ortenau, Baden, and studied natural history ...

(1779–1851), Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), and especially

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories ...

(1772–1844). With German

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

Johann Friedrich Meckel Johann Friedrich Meckel (17 October 1781 – 31 October 1833), often referred to as Johann Friedrich Meckel, the Younger, was a German anatomist born in Halle. He worked as a professor of anatomy, pathology and zoology at the University of Halle, ...

(1781–1833), the supposed " Meckel-Serres Law" is obtained. This was a theory that attempted to provide a link between comparative embryology and a "pattern of unification" in the organic world. It was based on a belief that within the entire animal kingdom there was a single unified body-type, and that during development, the organs of higher animals matched the forms of comparable organs in lower animals. This theory applied to both

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...

s and

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s, and also stated that higher animals go through embryological stages analogous to the adult stages of lower life-forms in the course of their development, a version of the

later ossified in the statement "

Ontogeny Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the s ...

recapitulates

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spe ...

" of Ernst Haeckel. In the field of

teratology Teratology is the study of abnormalities of physiological development in organisms during their life span. It is a sub-discipline in medical genetics which focuses on the classification of congenital abnormalities in dysmorphology. The relate ...

, Serres explained the presence of malformations as cases of arrested development or overdevelopment. He had disagreements with

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

regarding the latter's evolutionary theories. Serres believed that humans were creatures set apart and a supreme goal of all creation.

Associated eponyms

* Serres' angle: Also known as the metafacial angle, an angle between the base of the

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

and the

pterygoid process The pterygoid processes of the sphenoid (from Greek ''pteryx'', ''pterygos'', "wing"), one on either side, descend perpendicularly from the regions where the body and the greater wings of the sphenoid bone unite. Each process consists of a me ...

. * Serres' glands: Epithelial cell rests found in the subepithelial connective tissue in the

palate The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...

of the newborn.

Selected writings

* ''Essai sur l'anatomie et la physiologie des dents, ou Nouvelle théorie de la dentition'', 1817 - Essay on the anatomy and physiology of the teeth, or a new theory about dentition. * ''Anatomie comparée du cerveau, dans les quatre classes des animaux vertébrés, appliquée à la physiologie et à la pathologie du système nerveux'', 1824-1827 - Comparative anatomy of the brain, in the four classes of

s, as it applies to the physiology and pathology of the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...

. * ''Principes d'embryogénie, de zoogénie et de tératogénie'', 1859 - Principles of embryology,

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

and teratology.WorldCat Identities
(publications)

References

Form and Function a Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology By E. S. Russell
Russell was an “unabashed vitalist” who both rejected and misrepresented the Darwinian formulation of recapitulation defended by Ernst Haeckel (S. Gliboff. 2008. H. G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism. MIT Press -- see page 22)

* This article incorporates text from an equivalent article at the

Spanish Wikipedia The Spanish Wikipedia ( es, Wikipedia en español) is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. It has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006 and 1,000,000 articles on May 16, 2013 ...

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Serres, Etienne Officers of the French Academy of Sciences French embryologists 19th-century French physicians Teratologists 1786 births 1868 deaths People from Lot-et-Garonne