LAMARCK, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet de. - Born on 19 Aug. 1744 at Bazentin, a village in Picardy, and died in Paris on 18 Dec. 1819.
Already during his military service he had begun to collect plants; after returning to civilian life, at the age of 24 he undertook the study of medicine and simultaneously attended the botany course given in Paris by Lemonnier. In 1778 he published the Flore française (3 vols., Paris), for which, in 1779, he was admitted to the Académie des sciences, to which in 1870 he presented in manuscript his Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques (Paris 1794). In 1781–82 he travelled in various European countries together with Buffon’s son, with the task of visiting herbaria, museums, botanical gardens and of acquiring objects useful for collections. In 1783 he was entrusted with the drafting of the Dictionnaire de botanique (3 vols., Paris, completed in 1817); shortly afterwards he proposed a scheme of classification common to animals and plants. In 1789 he was appointed applied botanist to the Cabinet du Roi and professor at the Jardin des plantes; he wrote many works on botany.
In 1792 the Muséum d’histoire naturelle was founded in Paris, and in it L. was entrusted with the study of invertebrates. From then on he devoted himself especially to these, publishing the important Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (7 vols., Paris 1815–22), but he also addressed general and philosophical problems collected in the Philosophie zoologique (2 vols., ibid. 1869). Unfortunately he also became immersed in matters entirely foreign to his training, for which he was much criticised.
In his old age he returned to naturalistic studies, republishing various editions of his principal works, which in part he dictated to his daughter, having become almost blind.