Julien Jean Joseph Fraipont (17 August 1857 – 22 March 1910) was a Belgian paleontologist who worked as a professor of zoology at the

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...

and is best known for his descriptive work on

Neanderthal man Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...

. His son Charles Fraipont also became a paleontologist. Fraipont was born in Liege where his father directed a bank. He went to study humanities at the University of Liege so as to be able to work at his father's bank but shifted to the natural sciences after listening to the zoology lectures of

Edouard Van Beneden Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden (5 March 1846 in Leuven – 28 April 1910 in Liège), son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden, was a Belgian embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist. He was professor of zoology at the University of Liège ...

. In 1881 he became an assistant to Van Beneden and began to lecture in paleontology from 1884, taking the position of Gustave Dewalque. In 1886 he became a professor and served as a rector in 1909. His major work was in the anatomical examination of the Neanderthal fossils found along with

Max Lohest Marie Joseph Maximin "Max" Lohest (8 September 1857 – 6 December 1926) was a Belgian paleontologist and geologist. He served as an influential professor at the University of Liège and was involved in the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Spy C ...

and others in Spy cave in 1886. He also worked on the systematics of the protozoa, hydrozoa, cestodes and the

Archiannelida Haplodrili, or Archiannelida, is an order of primitive polychaete worms. Zoologist Ray Lankester gave it the name haplodrili, while zoologist Berthold Hatschek later named it Archiannelida. Once considered to be a class under Annelida, and even ...

. He also wrote a monograph on the genus ''

Okapia The okapi (; ''Okapia johnstoni''), also known as the forest giraffe, Congolese giraffe, or zebra giraffe, is an artiodactyl mammal that is endemic to the northeast Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa. It is the only species ...

'' which was discovered in the then Belgian Congo.

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External links

Biography
(in French, with publication list) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fraipont, Julien 1857 births 1910 deaths Belgian zoologists People from Liège University of Liège alumni Academic staff of the University of Liège