Menu :: Alia :: Jardin des Plantes

Renamed Jardin des Plantes after the French revolution, the previous Garden of the King is a very rich place for the history of science as it accomodates the National Museum of Natural History. Important personalities have worked there: Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788), author of the encyclopedic collection “L’Histoire Naturelle”, is appointed head of the garden from 1739 until 1788, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) establishes there his Museum of Comparative Anatomy where he works on his “Règne animal”, exhaustive list of species he considers fixed and immutable, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), partisan of transformism he exposes in his “Philosophie zoologique” is Professor of Zoology, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), who participated in the great scientific expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt in 1798 and moved to the transformism side, creates the Menagerie in 1793.