Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire
Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772–1844) was colleague of Lamarck (Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck) who expanded and defended his evolutionary theories. He became a professor of vertebrate zoology at the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris at 21. Geoffroy accompanied Napoleon during a military campaign in Egypt from 1798 through 1801, as one member of an "all-star" team of 150 scientists and artists. Other prominent members in this team were - Dominique-Vivant Denon, who became the first director of the Louvre; Claude Louis Berthollet, who was Napoleon's chemist, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, etc. Geoffroy's scientific views had a transcendental flavor (unlike Lamarck's materialistc views) and were simialar to German morphologists like Lorenz Oken. He believed in the underlying unity of organismal design, and the possibility of the transmutation of species in time, amassing evidence for his claims through research in comparative anatomy, paleontology, and embryology. More information can be found here.
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