François Poulletier de la Salle (September 30, 1719 – March 20, 1788) was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 doctor

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 and chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

. In about 1758, he isolated for the first time the crystals from cholesterol

Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...

. As his work was never published, attribution and the dating are known only roughly, but they were quoted by his collaborators, in particular Pierre-Joseph Macquer and Felix Vicq-d'Azyr

Félix Vicq-d'Azyr

Félix Vicq d'Azyr was a French physician and anatomist, the originator of comparative anatomy and discoverer of the theory of homology in biology.-Biography:Vicq d'Azyr was born in Valognes, Normandy, the son of a physician...

. He was born in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 and died in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.