Name Edmond Perrier | Died 1921, Paris, France | |
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Books The Earth Before History: Man's Origin and the Origin of Life | ||
Une semaine de fou edmond perrier
Jean Octave Edmond Perrier (9 May 1844 - 31 July 1921) was a French zoologist born in Tulle. He is known for his studies of invertebrates (annelids and echinoderms). He was the brother of zoologist Remy Perrier (1861-1936).
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On advice from Louis Pasteur, he studied sciences at the Ecole Normale Superieure, where he took classes in zoology from Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (1821-1901). Afterwards he was a schoolteacher for three years at the college in Agen. In 1869 he obtained his doctorate in natural sciences, later replacing Lacaze-Duthiers at the Ecole normale superieure (1872).
In 1876 he attained the chair of Natural History (mollusks, worms and zoophytes) at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, and in 1879 became chairman of the Societe zoologique de France. In the early 1880s he participated in a series of sea expeditions, during which, he performed investigations of marine life located within the benthic zone, subsequently gaining international recognition as a specialist of marine fauna.
In 1892 he became a member of the Academie des sciences, and even though he wasn't a doctor of medicine, he became a member of the Academie nationale de medecine (1898). From 1900 to 1919 he was director of the museum of natural history, where during the same time period (1903), he succeeded Henri Filhol (1843-1902) as chair of comparative anatomy.
Perrier was deeply interested in the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In 1909 he was speaker at the inauguration of Lamarck's monument at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle. He believed Lamarck to be the true founder in regards to the theory of evolution.