André Marie Constant Duméril

André Marie Constant Duméril
André Marie Constant Duméril
Born	1 January 1774 Amiens
Died	14 August 1860 (1860-08-15) (aged 86) Paris
Nationality	French
Fields	zoology
Institutions	Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

André Marie Constant Duméril (January 1, 1774 – August 14, 1860) was a French zoologist. He was professor of anatomy at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle from 1801 to 1812, when he became professor of herpetology and ichthyology. His son Auguste Duméril was also a zoologist.

André Marie Constant Duméril was born on January 1, 1774 in Amiens and died on August 14, 1860 in Paris.

He became a very young doctor obtaining, at 19 years, the “prévot” of anatomy at the Medical school of Rouen. In 1800, he left for Paris and collaborated in the drafting of the comparative anatomy lessons of Georges Cuvier.

He replaced Cuvier at the Central School of the Panthéon and had, for his colleague, Alexandre Brongniart. In 1801, he gave courses to the Medical school of Paris. Under the Restauration, he was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences (French Academy of Sciences) and succeeded, after 1803, Lacépède, who was occupied by his political offices, as professor of herpetology and ichthyology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. But Duméril only officially received this chair in 1825, after the death of Lacépède.

He published his Zoologie analytique in 1806. This covered the whole of the animal kingdom and shows the relations between genera as then distinguished, but not among species. In 1832, Gabriel Bibron (1806–1848), who became his assistant, was given the task of describing the species for an expanded version of Zoologie analytique, while Nicolaus Michael Oppel (1782–1820) assisted him with a revised higher-order systematics. After the death of Bibron, Auguste Duméril, André’s son replaced him. But the death of Bibron delayed, for ten years, the publication of the new work. In 1851, the two Dumérils, father and son, published the Catalogue méthodique de la collection des reptiles (although the son, Auguste Duméril’ was apparently the true author) and in 1853, André Duméril alone, published Prodrome de la classification des reptiles ophidiens. This last book proposes a classification of all the snakes in seven volumes.