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Baron Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier was a
French naturalist and
zoologist. He was the elder brother of
Frédéric Cuvier , also a naturalist. He was a major figure in scientific circles in Paris during the early 19th century, and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative
anatomy and
paleontology by comparing living animals with fossils. His most famous work is the
Regne animal distribué d'après son organisation . He died in
Paris of
cholera after a brief illness.
Life and scientific career
Cuvier was born at
Montbéliard under the name of Johann Leopold Nicolaus Friedrich Kuefer, the son of a retired officer on half-pay belonging to a Protestant family which had emigrated from the
Jura mountains on the French-Swiss border as a consequence of religious persecution.
The family followed the Lutheran tradition of work and religion. Early on, Georges Cuvier was given the works of
Linnaeus and
Buffon. Therefore it is not surprising that he showed a bent towards the investigation of natural phenomena. He was also noted for his studious habits and marvelous memory.
After spending four years at the
University of Stuttgart, where he received a pragmatic German education, he accepted the position of tutor in the cultivated family of the Comte d'Héricy in Normandy, who were in the habit of spending the summer near
Fécamp. It thus came about that he made the acquaintance of the agriculturist A. H. Tessier, who was then living at Fécamp, and who wrote strongly in favour of his protégé to his friends in
Paris — with the result that Cuvier, after corresponding with the well-known naturalist
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was appointed in 1795, at the age of 26, as assistant to the professor of comparative anatomy at the
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.
The
Institut de France was founded in the same year and he was elected a member. In 1796 he began to lecture at the
École Centrale du Pantheon, and at the opening of the National Institute in April, he read his first palaeontological paper, which was subsequently published in 1800 under the title
Mémoires sur les espèces d'éléphants vivants et fossiles.
In 1799 he succeeded
Daubenton as professor of natural history in the
College de France. In 1802 he became titular professor at the
Jardin des Plantes; and in the same year he was appointed commissary of the Institute to accompany the inspectors general of public instruction. In this latter capacity he visited the south of France; but he was in the early part of 1803 chosen perpetual secretary of the National Institute in the department of the physical and natural sciences, and he consequently abandoned the earlier appointment and returned to Paris.
He now devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiry: the structure and classification of the Mollusca; the comparative anatomy and systematic arrangement of the fishes; fossil mammals and reptiles and, secondarily, the
osteology of living forms belonging to the same groups.
In 1821, Cuvier made what has been called his "Rash Dictum": he remarked that it was unlikely that any large animal remained undiscovered. Many such discoveries have been made since Cuvier's statement.
Chief scientific work
On comparative anatomy and classification
In 1798 Cuvier published his first independent work, the
Tableau élémentaire de l'Histoire naturelle des animaux, which was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the École du Pantheon, and may be regarded as the foundation and first statement of his natural classification of the animal kingdom.
In 1800 he published the
Leçons d'anatomie comparée, assisted by
A. M. C. Duméril for the first two volumes and Georges Louis Duvernoy for the three later ones.
On molluscs
Cuvier's papers on the Mollusca began appearing as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this branch were published in the
Annales du museum between 1802 and 1815; they were subsequently collected as
Mémoires pour servir de l'histoire et a l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817.
On fishes
Cuvier's researches on
fishes, begun in 1801, finally culminated in the publication of the
Histoire naturelle des poissons, which contained descriptions of 5000 species of fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and A. Valenciennes. Cuvier's work on this project extended over the years 1828–1831.
On palaeontology and osteology
In this field Cuvier published a long list of memoirs, partly relating to the bones of extinct animals, and partly detailing the results of observations on the skeletons of living animals, specially examined with a view of throwing light upon the structure and affinities of the fossil forms.
Among living forms he published papers relating to the osteology of the
Rhinoceros Indicus, the
tapir,
Hyrax Capensis, the
hippopotamus, the
sloths, the
manatee, etc.
He produced an even larger body of work on fossils, dealing with the extinct mammals of the
Eocene beds of
Montmartre, the fossil species of
hippopotamus, a
marsupial , the
Megalonyx, the
Megatherium, the cave-
hyena, the
pterodactyl, the extinct species of
rhinoceros, the
cave bear, the
mastodont, the extinct species of
elephant,
fossil species of manatee and
seals, fossil forms of
crocodilians, chelonians, fishes,
birds, etc. The department of palaeontology dealing with the Mammalia may be said to have been essentially created and established by Cuvier.
The results of Cuvier's principal palaeontological and geological investigations were ultimately given to the world in the form of two separate works:
Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupedes ; and
Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe . In this latter work he expounded a scientific theory of Catastrophism, which sought to explain the fossil record as the result of a series of catastrophes in the manner of the Biblical Flood. Like many zoologists of the day, Cuvier was not sympathetic to the developing theory of transmutation of species , though he was dead before the publication of crucial works such as those of
Charles Lyell which were to pave the way for the theories of
Charles Darwin.
The Animal Kingdom
None of Cuvier's works attained a higher reputation than his
Regne animal distribué d'après son organisation, the first edition of which appeared in four octavo volumes in 1817, and the second in five volumes in 1829–1830. In this classic work Cuvier embodied the results of the whole of his previous researches on the structure of living and fossil animals. The whole of the work was his own, with the exception of the section on
Insecta, in which he was assisted by his friend
Latreille. It was translated into English many times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge.
Official and public work
Apart from his own original investigations in zoology and
paleontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official connected with public education generally; and much of this work appeared ultimately in a published form. Thus, in 1808 he was placed by
Napoleon upon the council of the Imperial University, and in this capacity he presided over commissions charged to examine the state of the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the
Alps and the
Rhine which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this subject were published by him.
In his capacity, again, of perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of
éloges historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but he was the author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural sciences, the most important of these being the
Rapport historique sur le progrès des sciences physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810.
Prior to the fall of Napoleon he had been admitted to the council of state, and his position remained unaffected by the restoration of the
Bourbons. He was elected chancellor of the university, in which capacity he acted as interim president of the council of public instruction, whilst he also, as a
Lutheran, superintended the faculty of Protestant theology. In 1819 he was appointed president of the committee of the interior, and retained the office until his death.
In 1826 he was made grand officer of the
Legion of Honour; and in 1831 he was raised by
Louis Philippe to the rank of peer of France, and was subsequently appointed president of the council of state. Member of the Doctrinaires, he was nominated to the ministry of the interior in the beginning of 1832.
Animals named after Cuvier
These include
Cuvier's beaked whale, Cuvier's Gazelle,
Cuvier's toucan, and
Cuvier's Bichir.
References
- Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France
- PJM Flourens, Eloge historique de G. Cuvier, published as an introduction to the Eloges historiques of Cuvier
- Histoire des truvaux de Georges Cuvier
- A. P. de Candolle, "Mort de G. Cuvier", Bibliothique universelle ;
- CL Laurillard, "Cuvier," Biographie universelle, supp. vol. 61
- Sarah Lee, Memoirs of Cuvier, translated into French by T Lacordaire
- Pietro Corsi, Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur leur état actuel, présenté à Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi, en son Conseil d'État, le 6 février 1808, par la classe des sciences physiques et mathématiques de l'Institut... conformément à l'arrêté du gouvernement du 13 ventôse an X
- Philippe Taquet, Georges Cuvier, Naissance d'un Génie; 539 pages; Ed. Odile jacob, Paris, 2006; ISBN 2-7381-0969-1
See also
