BLAINVILLE, HENRI-MARIE DUCTROY 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 Museum of Natural History. Appointed professor of anatomy and zoology in the faculty of sciences in 1812, he opposed the ideas of his teacher. He carried out work in systematics, zoology, comparative anatomy, general physiology, and paleontology. He accepted divine creation, but did not accept, as Cuvier did, repeated cataclysms; hence he admitted continuity in the series of beings, suggesting the idea of a unified creation.
Works: De l'organisation des animaux (Paris 1822); Manuel d'actionologie (there 1834); Ostéographie (there 1839); Histoire des sciences de l'organisation et de leurs progrès, comme base de la philosophie (there 1843).