François-Étienne de La Roche (or Delaroche) (9 December 1781 – 23 December 1813) was a Genevan

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

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 ...

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

Early life and family

He was born in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

to Marie Castanet and Daniel de La Roche, and was the youngest of three children. His father was an

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

-trained physician, botanist, and medical

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

from Geneva, who was friends with Louis Odier, the Swiss physician, medical translator and

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. After working in Geneva, the family moved to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

where de La Roche senior was physician to the

Duke of Orléans Duke of Orléans () was a French royal title usually granted by the King of France to one of his close relatives (usually a younger brother or son), or otherwise inherited through the male line. First created in 1344 by King Philip VI for his yo ...

, and later at the :fr:Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin health centre.

Career

De La Roche studied at the Faculty of Medicine at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

where, in 1806, he completed his medical thesis on the effects of strong heat on animal husbandry. He became a physician at ''L'Hôpital Necker''. He collected and studied fish on an expedition to the Spanish

Balearic islands The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago forms a Provinces of Spain, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain, ...

between October 1807 and May 1808; he observed and described new or little-known

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

from that location and made a study of the swim bladders of fish. In 1811, he carried out work on the

Specific Heat In thermodynamics, the specific heat capacity (symbol ) of a substance is the amount of heat that must be added to one unit of mass of the substance in order to cause an increase of one unit in temperature. It is also referred to as massic heat ...

of Gases in collaboration with the French

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and

Jacques Étienne Bérard, work which won a prize from the Paris Academy of Science in 1812. Also in 1812, he read a paper at the

Institut de France The ; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the . 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 ...

titled ''Dissertation on the effect that air temperature has on the phenomenon of respiration''. As an original researcher, his name is attached (as de La Roche or Delaroche) to the plant

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

''Alepidea'' and a number of different marine species.

Death

De La Roche became infected with

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

bacteria and died in 1813, only just aged 32, during the same epidemic that his father also succumbed to. Both were interred in the family grave in the 25th division of Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Taxon described by him

*See :Taxa named by François-Étienne de La Roche

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:La Roche, François-Étienne de 1781 births 1813 deaths 18th-century physicians from the Republic of Geneva 19th-century French physicians 19th-century French chemists Botanists from Geneva 19th-century French botanists 19th-century naturalists 18th-century scientists from the Republic of Geneva Botanists from the Republic of Geneva