Félix Joseph Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (15 May 1821 - 21 July 1901) was a French
biologistA biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
, anatomist and zoologist who was born in Montpezat in the department of
Lot-et-GaronneLot-et-Garonne is a department in the southwest of France named after the Lot and Garonne rivers.-History:Lot-et-Garonne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
. He studied medicine in
ParisParis 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...
, and worked at Necker Hospital under
Armand TrousseauArmand Trousseau was a French internist. His contributions to medicine include Trousseau sign of malignancy, Trousseau sign of latent tetany, Trousseau-Lallemand bodies , and the truism, "use new drugs quickly, while they still work."-Biography:A native of Tours, Indre-et-Loire, Armand Trousseau...
(1801–1867). Later, with Jules Haime (1824–1856), he travelled to the
Balearic IslandsThe Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
to study marine life. In 1854 he returned to Paris as an assistant to
Henri Milne-EdwardsHenri Milne-Edwards was an eminent French zoologist.Henri Milne-Edwards was the 27th child of William Edwards, an English planter and militia colonel in Jamaica and Elisabeth Vaux, a French. He was born in Bruges, Belgium, where his parents had retired. At that time, Bruges was a part of the...
(1800–1885), and soon afterwards became a professor of zoology in
LilleThe University of Lille -Nord de France , located in Lille, France, is a center for higher education, academic research and doctoral studies located over multiple campuses in the Academie de Lille....
.
In 1865 he succeeded
Achille ValenciennesAchille Valenciennes was a French zoologist.Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. Valenciennes' study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology...
(1794–1865) as chair of Natural History of Mollusks, Worms and Zoophytes at the
Muséum national d'histoire naturelleThe Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle is the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France.- History :The museum was formally founded on 10 June 1793, during the French Revolution...
, and in 1868 became a professor at the
University of ParisThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. In 1871 he was elected to
French Academy of SciencesThe French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
in the department of anatomy and zoology.
Lacaze-Duthiers is remembered for his study of the anatomy and developmental history of
musselThe common name mussel is used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca, from saltwater and freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other edible clams, which are often more or less rounded or oval.The...
s,
coralCorals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...
,
snailSnail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...
s,
brachiopodBrachiopods are a phylum of marine animals that have hard "valves" on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, while the front can be opened for feeding or closed for protection...
s and other lower marine animals. In 1858 he discovered three mollusks in the Mediterranean that produced purple-blue dyes. One of the species, named
murex trunculus was the source of the distinctive purple-blue dye used by the ancient
PhoeniciaPhoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
ns and
CanaanCanaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ites. He also performed pioneer exploration of marine life of coastal Algeria.
He founded two laboratories devoted to
marine biologyMarine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
; the biological station at
RoscoffThe Station biologique de Roscoff is a french marine biology and oceanography research and teaching center. Founded by Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers in 1872, it is at the present time affiliated to the Université Pierre et Marie Curie , the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers et de...
in 1876, and the Arago laboratory at
Banyuls-sur-MerBanyuls-sur-Mer is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France.-Geography:Banyuls-sur-Mer is neighbored by Cerbère, Port-Vendres, Argelès-sur-Mer and Collioure. The region is known for its wines, such as the sweet wine Banyuls. An aquatic museum with aquarium is located in...
in 1882. With his student Pruvot Georges (1852–1924), he founded the journal
Archives de zoologie expérimentale et générale (Archives of Experimental and General Zoology). One of his better known written works was an 1863 treatise on the
natural historyNatural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
of coral called
Histoire naturelle du corail.