Naturalist and pre-Darwinian evolutionist, born in Bazentin, France. He was an army officer and worked in a bank before developoing his interests in medicine and botany, in 1773 publishing the successful Flore français (French Flora). In 1774 he became keeper of the royal garden, and in 1793 was made professor of invertebrate zoology at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. His major works were Philosophie zoologique (1809), in which he postulated that acquired characters can be inherited by future generations, and Histoire des animaux sans vertèbres (1815-22, Natural History of Invertebrate Animals).