Henri Milne-Edwards
| Henri Milne-Edwards | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
23 October 1800 Bruges, French First Republic |
| Died | 29 July 1885 (aged 84) Paris, French Third Republic |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Zoology |
| Notable awards | Copley Medal (1856) |
Henri Milne-Edwards FRS FRSE (23 October 1800 – 29 July 1885) was an eminent French zoologist.
Henri Milne-Edwards was the 27th child of William Edwards, an English planter and colonel of the militia in Jamaica and Elisabeth Vaux, a Frenchwoman. Henri was born in Bruges, in present-day Belgium, where his parents had retired; Bruges was then a part of the newborn French Republic. His father had been jailed for several years for helping some Englishmen in their escape to their country. Henri spent most of his life in France. He was brought up in Paris by his older brother Guillaume Frederic Edwards (1777–1842), a distinguished physiologist and ethnologist. His father was released after the fall of Napoleon. The whole family then moved to Paris.
At first he turned his attention to medicine, in which he graduated as an MD at Paris in 1823. His passion for natural history soon prevailed, and he gave himself up to the study of the lower forms of animal life. He became a student of Georges Cuvier and befriended Jean Victoire Audouin.
He married Laura Trézel. They had nine children, including the biologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards.
Originally the name Milne was one of the first names of Henri, but, to avoid confusion with his numerous relatives, he added it to his surname Edwards. He usually wrote it as "Milne Edwards", whilst his son Alphonse always used "Milne-Edwards". In taxon-authorship, the hyphenated name "Milne-Edwards" is most often used for both father and son.
One of his earliest papers (Recherches anatomiques sur les crustacés), which was presented to the French Academy of Sciences in 1829, formed the theme of an elaborate and eulogistic report by Cuvier in the following year. It embodied the results of two dredging expeditions undertaken by him and his friend Audouin during 1826 and 1828 in the neighbourhood of Granville, and was remarkable for clearly distinguishing the marine fauna of that portion of the French coast into four zones.
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