Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: biography of this French naturalist.

A review of the life of this advocate of the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

If we talk about evolution, probably the first name that comes to mind is that of Charles Darwin. However, Darwin was not the only great author Darwin was not the only great author who worked on this aspect of evolution.However, Darwin was not the only great author who worked on this aspect, and there were other authors with a different consideration of the evolution of species and who even served as inspiration for him.

The most outstanding of all, although with the passing of time his ideas became obsolete and lost popularity in favor of other theories with greater scientific backing, is Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

This man, one of the first pioneers in separating the development of species from faith, is the father of the term biology as we know it and the author of one of the first truly coherent and integrated evolutionary theories. Understanding his life can greatly help us to appreciate his thought, which is why throughout this article we will outline a brief biography of Lamarck. we will outline a brief biography of Lamarck, as well as his scientific legacy.as well as his scientific legacy.

Brief biography of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet cavaliere di Lamarck, better known as Lamarck, was born in the village of Bazentin (in the region of Picardy, Somme) on August 1, 1744. Son of Philippe Jacques de Monet de La Marck and Marie-Françoise de Fontaines de Chuignolles, he was the eleventh son of a noble family dedicated to the military..

His father decided to enroll the young Lamarck in a Jesuit seminary so that he could dedicate his life to the priesthood. The young man would remain with them and would receive an education and formation in different subjects within the ecclesiastical career. However, when his father died in 1759, Lamarck decided to leave the cloth and enlist in the military.

Military service and further studies

When he turned seventeen, in 1761, he acquired a horse and enlisted in the army. His military career was short but intense, being promoted to officer during his first year in the army and participating in the Seven Years' War. He became a knight. However, in 1768 he suffered a major neck injury which, after generating scrofula (infection in the neck ganglia that generates great inflammation) would force him to end his military career.

He moved to Paris, where he initially lived on the pension and paternal inheritance with his brother Philippe François. There he began studying music, but finally decided to later work as an accountant.

After that he decided to study medicine for four years.During this period, he also received training in what would become one of his great passions: botany. It would be in this and in the natural sciences in which he would manifest greater interest, specializing in their study and participating in the herborizations studied by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Botany and the rise of his prestige

Such was his interest that he would carry out an important research work based on the observation of plants, inventing in the process the so-called dichotomous method in order to classify in a systematized way the flora of France. This work would be published in 1779 under the name "Flore françois", thanks to Count Georges Louis Buffon. In time and largely thanks to the popularity achieved by this publication, he was appointed member of the Academy of Sciences. he was appointed member of the Academy of Sciences.

Lamarck was contacted by Buffon in 1780 to lead a mission to Europe to increase the botanical collection of the Jardin du Roi (King's Garden), which he did successfully. The author worked as a botanist in that garden until 1793 in the Jardin du Roi (King's Garden). At this time he married Marie Annie Rosalie Delaforte, with whom he had five children and who unfortunately died in 1792.

That same garden, with the advent of the French Revolution and largely thanks to his largely thanks to his influence, would be transformed into the National Museum of Natural History.. There he would be appointed by the Committee of Public Instruction as Director or professor of the department of lower animals.

This department was in charge of the study of insects and other animals that today we call invertebrates. In fact, this same concept was created by him to define the animals that do not have vertebrae: in the course of his studies he would elaborate the main subdivisions that still exist today.

In addition to this, he also coined the term biology to identify animals that do not have vertebrae, he also coined the term biology to identify the science that studies living beings.. That year 1793 he also married for the second time, this time to Victoire Charlotte Reverdy, with whom he would have two more children. However, this second wife died a few years later, in 1797. A year later, he married Julie Mallet for the third time.

In addition to beginning to teach, during this period he would elaborate what would be one of his most recognized works, the "Natural History of Invertebrates", which would consist of several volumes that were elaborated between 1815 and 1822. And in the studies he carried out during this period we find the germ that would eventually produce his theory of evolution.

His work in meteorology

Another of the branches in which he began to work was meteorology.He was a pioneer in assessing that it was possible to predict the weather through probabilistic methods. In this field he believed that understanding what generates atmospheric disturbances makes it possible to predict with certain accuracy the behavior of the weather.

Some of the possible causes of atmospheric phenomena he proposed were the influence of the Sun and the Moon, as well as the rotation of the Earth. However, in this sense, he published several meteorological yearbooks, in which several errors were found and which in fact are considered his least accurate works. It would be then when he would begin to suffer some discredit.

Lamarckism

Although initially Lamarck considered that living beings did not undergo any change, with time and research he began to entertain the idea that in reality there was no change. the idea that in reality there was an evolutionary process.The concept of "living beings": living beings have not been created and remain immutable, but have been varying from simpler beings that preceded them.

Likewise, he would consider that the organs and characteristics of the different beings atrophy or develop according to their use, and that the characteristics acquired by the predecessor organisms that are useful are transmitted to their descendants (the best known example being the neck of giraffes). He considers that it is habit and necessity that causes organisms to modify.

His ideas about evolution and the inheritance of acquired characteristics saw the light of day in Zoological Philosophypublished in 1809, which is the first theoretical body that brings together the knowledge of the time regarding evolution. This paper was and still is of great historical relevance, allowing debate at a time when biology was still strongly associated with creationism.

Fall from grace, final years and death

However, it also caused him suffering: he offered a copy to Napoleon Bonaparte, who would reject it in public. In addition, at this stage his health began to decline, and he also had several conflicts and disputes with various authors that gradually diminished his prestige: He criticized Lavoisier's work on the functioning of fluids, and his work was branded as untrustworthy.His works were labeled as unscientific and biased, and it was said that he overvalued his arguments.

He was also in deep enmity with the biologist Georges Cuvier, who was highly regarded by the public and who started from a more empirical and experimental basis, describing Lamarck's theories as nonsense.

Unfortunately for Lamarck, as the years went by, his many contributions on the subject of his numerous contributions on evolution gradually fell into disrepute.. From 1819 he became blind, having in fact to dictate some of his works to his daughters. In addition, his third wife, Jules Maillet, died during this period. All this, together with the collapse of the author's little prestige caused him to become impoverished and he ended up falling ill.

He spent the last years of his life in the care of his daughters, ignored and with hardly any recognition. He died on December 18, 1829, at the age of 85, in Paris.

Although Lamarck's theory of evolution has been outdated and surpassed by Darwin's, and in the last years of his life he was discredited and ignored, with the passing of time his ideas have been seen as an important advance in scientific knowledge. his ideas have been seen as an important advance in the scientific knowledge of the era in which he lived and of the time in which he lived and has served as the basis for many theories. In addition, although he is not so well known, his concepts and classifications are concepts and classifications such as invertebrates, or the term biology, in addition to contributing greatly to the development of botany and zoology.