LAMARCK, JEAN-BAPTISTE-PIERRE-ANTOINE de MONET de. - Born on 1 August 1744 at Bazentin, a village in Picardy, and died in Paris on 18 December 1819.
Already during his military life he had begun to collect plants; after his return to civilian life he undertook, at the age of 24, the study of medicine and at the same time followed in Paris the botany course taught by Lemonnier; in 1778 he published the Flore française (3 vols., Paris), for which, in 1779, he was received into the Académie des sciences, to which he presented, in 1870, in manuscript, the Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques (Paris 1794). In 1781-82 he travelled through various European countries together with Buffon's son, with the task of visiting herbaria, museums and botanical gardens and of acquiring objects useful to the collections. In 1783 he was charged with the editing 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 botanist attached to the Cabinet du Roi and professor at the Jardin des plantes; he wrote many works on botany.
In 1792 the Museum of Natural History was founded in Paris and in it L. was charged with the study of invertebrates. From then on he devoted himself above all to these, publishing the important Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (7 vols., Paris 1815-22), but he also dealt with general and philosophical problems gathered together in the Philosophie zoologique (2 vols., ibid. 1809). Unfortunately he also became bogged down in questions completely foreign to his preparation, for which he was much criticized.
In old age he returned to naturalistic studies, republishing various editions of his principal works, which he partly dictated to his daughter, having become almost blind.