Cuvier, Georges Leopold 1769 - 1832

Georges Leopold Cuvier was born on 23 August 1769 in Montbéliard, a town attached to the German duchy of Württemberg until the 1790s, when it passed to France. Between 1784 and 1788 he attended the Académie Caroline (Karlsschule) in Württemberg’s capital, Stuttgart, where he studied comparative anatomy and learned to dissect. After graduating, Cuvier worked as a tutor between 1788 and 1795, in 1788–95 as a tutor, during which time he wrote original studies of marine invertebrates, particularly molluscs. His notes were sent to Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a professor of zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, and at Geoffroy’s urging Cuvier joined the staff of the museum. For a period the two scientists collaborated, and in 1795 they jointly published a study of mammalian classification.

Whilst at the Museum of Natural History, Cuvier carried out research into comparative anatomy. This produced a number of works: 'Tableau élémentaire de l’histoire naturelle des animaux', based on his lectures, in 1797, and 'Leçons d’anatomie comparée' between 1800 and 1805. In this work, based also on his lectures at the museum, he put forward his principle of the “correlation of parts,” according to which the anatomical structure of every organ is functionally related to all other organs in the body of an animal, and the functional and structural characteristics of organs result from their interaction with their environment.

Whilst continuing his zoological work at the museum, Cuvier also brought about major reforms in education. He served as imperial inspector of public instruction and assisted in the establishment of French provincial universities, for which he was granted the title chevalier in 1811. He also wrote the 'Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur leur état actuel', published in 1810. During this period Cuvier also applied his views on the correlation of parts to a systematic study of fossils that he had excavated, in which he reconstructed complete skeletons of unknown fossil quadrupeds, revealing that whole species of animals had become extinct. He summarised his conclusions, first in 1812 in 'Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes', and in 1825 in 'Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe'.

I1814 Cuvier was elected to the Council of State, and in 1817 he became a vice president of the Ministry of the Interior. In 1817 he also published 'Le Règne animal distribué d’après son organisation' which was a signfiicant advance in thesystems of classification that had previously been established by Linnaeus.

By introducing fossils into zoological classification and by demonstrating the importance of functional and anatomical relationships through comparative anatomy and the reconstruction of fossil skeletons, Cuvier is widely seen to have established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology. He died in Paris on 13 May 1832.