Georges Cuvier

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), full name Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, also Baron Cuvier, was a celebrated French naturalist, born at Montebéliard, of Huguenot ancestry. He was the creator of comparative anatomy and palæontology. He was educated at Stuttgart, where he studied natural science, but the observation of marine animals on the coast of Normandy, where he held a tutorship, first led him to the systematic study of anatomy, and brought him into correspondence with Geoffroy St. Hilaire and others, who invited him to Paris, where he prosecuted his investigations, matured his views, and became professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, a member of the French Institute, and Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and eventually a peer of France. His labours in the science to which he devoted his life were immense, but he continued to the last a determined opponent of the theory, then being broached and now in vogue, of a common descent.

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