BLAINVILLE, HENRI-MARIE DUCRÉTET DE. - Naturalist, born at Arques near Dieppe on 12 September 1777 and died in Paris on 1 May 1850. He was Cuvier’s substitute at the Collège de France and at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. Appointed professor of anatomy and zoology in the faculty of sciences in 1812, he opposed the ideas of his master. He carried out work in systematics, zoology, comparative anatomy, general physiology and paleontology. He admitted divine creation, but unlike Cuvier he did not admit repeated cataclysms; hence he maintained a continuity in the series of beings, suggesting the idea of a unitary creation.
Works: *De l’organisation des animaux* (Paris 1822); *Manuel d’ostéologie* (ibid. 1834); *Ostéographie* (ibid. 1839); *Histoire des sciences de l’organisation et de leurs progrès, comme base de la philosophie* (ibid. 1843).