Frédéric Cuvier
French zoologist and paleontologist (1773–1838)
title: "Frédéric Cuvier" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1773-births", "1838-deaths", "19th-century-french-zoologists", "french-protestants", "foreign-members-of-the-royal-society", "members-of-the-french-academy-of-sciences", "scientists-from-montbéliard", "proto-evolutionary-biologists", "zookeepers", "french-fellows-of-the-royal-society"] description: "French zoologist and paleontologist (1773–1838)" topic_path: "science/biology" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Cuvier" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary French zoologist and paleontologist (1773–1838) ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Frédéric Cuvier |
| image | Frédéric Cuvier by Ambroise Tardieu.jpg |
| caption | Portrait by Ambroise Tardieu |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | Montbéliard, France |
| death_date | |
| death_place | Strasbourg, France |
| field | Zoology |
| work_institution | Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle |
| author_abbreviation_bot | F.Cuvier |
| author_abbreviation_zoo | F. Cuvier |
| prizes | Member of the Royal Society |
| :: |
| name = Frédéric Cuvier | image = Frédéric Cuvier by Ambroise Tardieu.jpg | caption = Portrait by Ambroise Tardieu | birth_date = | birth_place = Montbéliard, France | death_date = | death_place = Strasbourg, France | field = Zoology | work_institution = Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle | known_for = | author_abbreviation_bot = F.Cuvier | author_abbreviation_zoo = F. Cuvier | prizes = Member of the Royal Society Georges-Frédéric Cuvier (; 28 June 1773 – 24 July 1838) was a French zoologist and paleontologist. He was the younger brother of noted naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier.
Career
Frederic was the head keeper of the menagerie at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris from 1804 to 1838. He named the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) in 1825. The chair of comparative physiology was created for him at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1837. He was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1835.
He is mentioned in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (Chapter VII) as having worked on animal behaviour and instinct, especially the distinction between habit and instinct. He is also mentioned in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (Chapter 32) as having written on the topic of whales.
Evolution
Cuvier has been described as the first scientist to use terms "héréditaire" (hereditary) in 1807 and "heredity" in 1812 in their now biological context. He used both words in promoting the inheritance of acquired characteristics based on his studies of animal behaviour.
Although an advocate of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, similar to his brother he denied the transmutation of species. He believed that behavioral patterns in animals change over time in relation to environmentally induced needs. Historian Robert J. Richards has written that Cuvier "did not believe that the anatomical patterns of species were modified over time (though he did admit they changed in nonessential ways through the inheritance of acquired characteristics... He was a behavioral evolutionist, if a modest one."
List of selected publications
;Books
- Histoire naturelle des mammifères (4 vols., 1819–1842) (with Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire)
- De l’histoire naturelle des cétacés. Roret, Paris 1836
- Observations préliminaires, pp. i–xxiv in Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, by G. Cuvier, ed. 4, vol. 1. E. d’Ocagne, Paris, 1834.
;Papers
- Cuvier, F. (1808). Observations sur le chien des habitans de la Nouvelle-Hollande, précédés de quelques réflexions sur les facultés morales des animaux. Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. 11: 458–476.
- Cuvier, F. (1812). Essais sur les facultés intellectuelles des brutes. Nouv. Bull. Sci. Soc. Philomat. 3: 217–218
References
References
- Burkhardt, R. W. (2011). ''Lamarck, Cuvier, and Darwin on Animal Behavior''. In Snait B. Gissis, Eva Jablonka. ''Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology''. MIT Press. pp. 33-44.
- Burkhardt, Richard W.. (2013-08-01). "Lamarck, Evolution, and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters". Genetics.
- Richards, Robert J. (1987). ''Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior''. University of Chicago Press. pp. 65-70. {{ISBN. 0-226-71200-1
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