Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

French naturalist

Date of Birth: 01-Aug-1744

Place of Birth: Bazentin, Hauts-de-France, France

Date of Death: 18-Dec-1829

Profession: naturalist, zoologist, chemist, Encyclopédistes, biologist, university teacher, paleontologist, meteorologist, botanist, academic, malacologist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Leo


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About Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  • Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; French: [??~batist lama?k]), was a French naturalist.
  • He was a soldier, biologist, and academic, and an early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.
  • Lamarck fought in the Pomeranian War (1757–62) against Prussia, and was awarded a commission for bravery on the battlefield.
  • Posted to Monaco, Lamarck became interested in natural history and resolved to study medicine.
  • He retired from the army after being injured in 1766, and returned to his medical studies.
  • Lamarck developed a particular interest in botany, and later, after he published the three-volume work Flore françoise (1778), he gained membership of the French Academy of Sciences in 1779.
  • Lamarck became involved in the Jardin des Plantes and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788.
  • When the French National Assembly founded the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in 1793, Lamarck became a professor of zoology. In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, a major work on the classification of invertebrates, a term he coined.
  • In an 1802 publication, he became one of the first to use the term "biology" in its modern sense.
  • Lamarck continued his work as a premier authority on invertebrate zoology.
  • He is remembered, at least in malacology, as a taxonomist of considerable stature. The modern era generally remembers Lamarck for a theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, called Lamarckism (inaccurately named after him), soft inheritance, or use/disuse theory, which he described in his 1809 Philosophie Zoologique.
  • However, the idea of soft inheritance long antedates him, formed only a small element of his theory of evolution, and was in his time accepted by many natural historians.
  • Lamarck's contribution to evolutionary theory consisted of the first truly cohesive theory of biological evolution, in which an alchemical complexifying force drove organisms up a ladder of complexity, and a second environmental force adapted them to local environments through use and disuse of characteristics, differentiating them from other organisms.
  • Scientists have debated whether advances in the field of transgenerational epigenetics mean that Lamarck was to an extent correct, or not.

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