Baron André Étienne Justin Pascal Joseph François d'Audebert de Férussac (30 December 1786 – 21 January 1836) was a French

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

best known for his studies of

molluscs Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum ...

. (Two of his given names are sometimes spelt Just or Juste instead of Justin, and d'Audibert, d'Audebard, or d'Audeberd instead of "d'Audebert".) He was born in Chartron, near Lauzerte in the province of

Quercy Quercy (; , locally ) is a former province of France located in the country's southwest, bounded on the north by Limousin, on the west by Périgord and Agenais, on the south by Gascony and Languedoc, and on the east by Rouergue and Auverg ...

(now in

Tarn-et-Garonne Tarn-et-Garonne (; ) is a Departments of France, department in the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania Regions of France, region in Southern France. It is traversed by the rivers Tarn (river), Tarn and Garonne, from which it takes its n ...

), the son of Jean Baptiste Louis d'Audibert de Férussac and Marie Catherine Josèphe de Rozet, and was professor of geography and statistics at the École d'état-major in Paris.

Taxa

Férussac named and described numerous

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

gastropod Gastropods (), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and fro ...

s, including: * '' Cochlodina'' Férussac, 1821, a

land snail A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. ''Land snail'' is the common name for terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have gastropod shell, shel ...

genus * ''

Helicostyla ''Helicostyla'' is a genus of small, air-breathing land snails, terrestrial animal, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the subfamily Helicostylinae of the family Camaenidae. ''Helicostyla'' is the type genus of the subfamily Helicostyl ...

'' Férussac, 1821, a

genus Various other taxa were named in honor of him, including: *

Ferussaciidae Ferussaciidae is a family of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the Taxonomic rank, superfamily Achatinoidea.MolluscaBase eds. (2020). MolluscaBase. Ferussaciidae Bourguignat, 1883. Access ...

Bourguignat, 1883,Bourguignat, J. R. 1883. ''Historie malacologique de l'Abyssinie''. Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Zoologie, ser. 6, 15 (Art. 2): 120. a land snail family

Works

Férussac's works include: * Férussac A. E. J. P. J. F. d'Audebard de 1821–1822
''Tableaux systématiques des animaux mollusques classés en familles naturelles, dans lesquels on a établi la concordance de tous les systèmes; suivis d'un prodrome général pour tous les mollusques terrestres ou fluviatiles, vivants ou fossiles''
pp. j–xlvij 1–47 1–110, Paris, Londres. (Bertrand, Sowerby). * The first 28 parts of ''Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des mollusques terrestres et fluviatiles'', on land and freshwater molluscs (4 volumes, 1819–1832), originally begun by his father and later completed by Gérard Paul Deshayes. * The introduction and first 11 parts of ''Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des céphalopodes acétabulifères'' (Paris, 1834–5), later revised and completed by

d'Orbigny Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology (including malacology), palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthropol ...

. He was also, from 1822, the editor of the ''Bulletin général et universel des annonces et des nouvelles scientifiques''.

References

* Bru, B. and T. Martin (2005) Le baron de Ferussac, la couleur de la statistique et la topologie des sciences,
Journ@l Electronique d'Histoire des Probabilités et de la Statistique
'' 1 (2). * Winckworth, R. (1941) in ''Proceedings of the Malacological Society'', pp. 34–6. 1786 births 1836 deaths People from Tarn-et-Garonne French barons Members of the 1st Chamber of Deputies of the July Monarchy Members of Parliament for Tarn-et-Garonne French naturalists French malacologists Teuthologists French military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars {{France-scientist-stub