Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de (1744-1829), French soldier, naturalist and academic.

16 autograph letters from Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), dated from 09/03/1794 to 25/11/1818. Correspondants include: Henri Agasse (1752-1813), French editor of his works (no.3, 7, 8, 13, 14); Adrien-Cyprien Duquesnoy, Director of the French Salines (no. 10-11). One letter undated (no.16)

4 receipts signed by Lamarck, mentioning the payments received from his editor Panckoucke (no.17-20), dated from 31/01/1793 to 23/08/1979.

Several papers dealing with the publication of Lamarck's Flore Française (contracts, accounts...), with the signature of Lamarck (no.21-26)

8 documents (mostly receipts) signed by Jean-Georges Antoine Stoupe (1763-1808), French printer working with Panckoucke and Agasse (no.27-31, 33-35)

Other documents undated or unisigned.

1793-1818

1 file (37 items)

Purchased from : unknown vendor, Paris, April 1930 (acc.67391); Desgranges, Paris, July 1930 (acc.63445); R. Bonnet, Giroflay, November 1930 (acc.63439); Degrange, Paris, February 1931(acc.64689); R. Bonnet, Giroflay, March 1931 (acc.63979); Desgranges, Paris, September 1931 (acc.64710) ; Desgranges, Paris, September 1931 (acc.64713); Desgranges, Paris, October 1931 (acc.64709); Charavay, Paris, January 1932 (acc.64873); Desgranges, Paris, November 1932 (acc.65663); Desgranges, Paris, November 1932 (acc.65667); Desgranges, Paris, January 1933 (acc.66034); presented by Captain Saint (and probably acquired by him in Paris), January 1933 (acc.66021); no accession details recorded for nos. 17 and 18.

Lamarck was born in Bazentin, Picardie (France), on 1 August 1744, in an aristocratic family. He joined the French army and fought in the Pomeranian war with Prussia. He retired from the army after being injured in 1766 and devoted himself to scientific studies. He studied medicine but also natural history, and developed a particular interest for botany.

His work La Flore Française opened him the doors of the French Academy of Sciences, which he entered in 1779. He then became a professor of Botany in 1788 at the Jardin des Plantes, and was appointed as a professor of zoology in the newly-founded Museum of Natural History of Paris in 1793. He published several books of great importance, as the Système des animaux sans vertèbres in 1801 and Hydrogéologie in 1802; and became one of the firsts to use the term biology in its modern sense. He also contributed to the evolutionary theory. He died in Paris on 18 December 1829.