Biography
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was a French naturalist, biologist and zoologist who became one of the earliest and most influential thinkers to propose a systematic theory of biological evolution. He was born on August 1, 1744, in Bazentin, France, and initially pursued a military career before turning to botany and natural history.In 1778, Lamarck published Flore française, a major work on the plants of France that brought him recognition and helped lead to his election to the French Academy of Sciences in 1779. After the French Revolution, he became a professor of zoology at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, where he devoted much of his work to the study and classification of invertebrates.
Lamarck became convinced that species were not fixed but changed gradually over time. In his Philosophie zoologique, published in 1809, he presented a comprehensive theory of transformation in which organisms adapted to changing circumstances and inherited characteristics acquired during their lives. Although the mechanism of inheritance he proposed was later rejected, his insistence that species change according to natural laws was an important step in the history of evolutionary thought.
He also made major contributions to botany, zoology, paleontology and geology, and helped establish biology as a distinct scientific discipline. His extensive Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres was published between 1815 and 1822.
Lamarck died in Paris on December 18, 1829. His ideas were largely neglected during his lifetime, but his work was later recognized as an important precursor to modern evolutionary biology.