Maurice Jules Gaston Corneille Caullery (5 September 1868,

Bergues Bergues (; nl, Sint-Winoksbergen; vls, Bergn) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is situated to the south of Dunkirk and from the Belgian border. Locally it is referred to as "the other Bruges in Flanders". Bergues ...

– 13 July 1958,

Paris Paris () is the capital and 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), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

) was a French

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

Biography

He was born in

in north France on 5 September 1868. His early education was in

Douai Douai (, , ,; pcd, Doï; nl, Dowaai; formerly spelled Douay or Doway in English) is a city in the Nord département in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe some from Lille and from Arras, D ...

. He began as a lecturer in

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, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

in 1897. From 1901 to 1903 he was a lecturer at the faculty of sciences in

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

, and from 1903 to 1909, taught classes at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

(laboratory of ''évolution des êtres organisés''). In 1909 he succeeded

Alfred Mathieu Giard Alfred Mathieu Giard (8 August 1846 – 8 August 1908) was a French zoologist born in Valenciennes. Biography In 1867 he began his studies of natural sciences at the École Normale Supérieure, followed by work as ''préparateur de zoologie'' a ...

(1846-1908) as director of the zoological station in

Wimereux Wimereux (; vls, Wimeruwe) is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. Geography Wimereux is a coastal town situated some north of Boulogne, at the junction of the D233 and the D940 roads, on the ban ...

. In 1923 he opened a new laboratory of ''évolution des êtres organisés'' on Boulevard Raspail in

. Maurice Caullery (1868-1958)- biographie - Archives de l'Institut Pasteur Caullery specialised in parasitic

protozoans Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris. Histor ...

and marine

invertebrates 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 ...

. He also worked on

insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...

. His research of ''Siboglinum weberi'' was to become the foundation for establishing the family of beard worms known today as

Siboglinidae Siboglinidae is a family (biology), family of polychaete Annelida, annelid worms whose members made up the former phylum, phyla Pogonophora and Vestimentifera (the giant tube worms). The family is composed of about 100 species of vermiform creatur ...

. Also, he investigated how the various biological aspects of

tunicates A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata (). It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords (including vertebrates). The subphylum was at one time ca ...

and

annelids The annelids (Annelida , from Latin ', "little ring"), also known as the segmented worms, are a large phylum, with over 22,000 extant species including ragworms, earthworms, and leeches. The species exist in and have adapted to various ecolo ...

impacted their evolution. In 1915 he was elected president of the

Société zoologique de France La Société zoologique de France ( en, "Zoological Society of France"), founded in 1876 by Aimé Bouvier, is a scientific society devoted to Zoology. It publishes a bulletin and organises the Prix Gadeau de Kerville de la Société zoologique d ...

, and later on in his career, he served as president of the

Académie des 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 ...

(1945) and the

Société de biologie The Société de biologie is a learned society founded in Paris in 1848. The society was conceived during the French Revolution of 1848. The members of the society held regular meetings and published the proceedings in a new scientific journal. The ...

(1946). He died in

on 13 July 1958.

Evolution

Caullery was an advocate of

Lamarckian 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 calle ...

evolution and

Mendelism Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularize ...

.Bowler, Peter J. (1983). ''The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades around 1900''. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 116. He argued that modern evolution had stopped and the Lamarckian mechanism had "run out of steam", leaving Mendelian processes in operation. He argued that the inheritance of acquired characters was the main mechanism of evolution but it had only operated in the past.

Awards

He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

in 1930 and an Honorary Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1948. He was awarded the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...

's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958.

Selected writings

* ''Les universités et la vie scientifique aux États-Unis'' (1917)
''Les problèmes de la sexualité''
(1919)
''Le Parasitime et la symbiosis''
(1922) * ''Le Problème de l'évolution'' (1931) * ''Present Theories of Evolution and the Problem of Adaptation'' (1933) * ''Organisme et sexualité'' (1942) * ''Parasitism and Symbiosis'' (1952)Davenport, Demorest. (1954)
''Parasitism and Symbiosis by Maurice Caullery, Averil M. Lysaght. Le Parasitisme et la Symbiose by Maurice Caullery''
''

The Quarterly Review of Biology ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass b ...

'' 29 (3): 255. * ''Genetics and Heredity'' (1964) * ''A History of Biology'' (1966)

References

* Heim, R. 1960: aullery, M. J. G. ''Year Book Royal Soc. Edinb.'' 60(1957–59) 33-34.

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Caullery, Maurice 1868 births 1958 deaths Foreign Members of the Royal Society French entomologists 19th-century French zoologists Lamarckism Members of the French Academy of Sciences People from Bergues 20th-century French zoologists