François Jules Pictet de la Rive
François Jules Pictet-De la Rive (27 September 1809 – 15 March 1872) was a
Biography
He was born in
In 1846 his duties were restricted to certain branches of zoology, including geology and palaeontology, and these he continued to teach until 1859, when he retired to devote his energies to the museum of natural history and to special palaeontological work. He was rector of the Academy from 1847 to 1850, and again from 1866 to 1868. He was for many years a member of the "Grand Conseil", the parliament of the Canton of Geneva, serving as its president in 1863 and 1864.[1]
His earlier published work related chiefly to entomology, and included Recherches pour servir à l'histoire et à l'anatomie des Phryganides (1834) and two parts of Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, des insectes névroptères (1842–1845).[1]
He directed his attention to the fossils of his native country, more especially to those of the
A species of Malagasy snake,
Successive creation
He was the author of Traité élémentaire de paléontologie (4 vols. 1844-1846). In the first edition Pictet, while adopting the hypothesis of successive creations of species, admitted that some may have originated through the modification of pre-existing forms. In his second edition (1853–1857) he enters further into the probable transformation of some species, and discusses the independence of certain faunas, which did not appear to have originated from the types which locally preceded them.[1] Alfred Russel Wallace made notes on Pictet's Paleontology [3] and these have been suggested [4] as giving a structure for his 'Sarawak Law' paper of 1855 which contains the assertion that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species": this, omitting the word 'generally' is point 2 of Wallace's precis.
Pictet was an advocate of
He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1864.[6]
References
- ^ a b c d e public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pictet de la Rive, François Jules". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 586. Endnotes:
- Obituary by W. S. Dallas, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1873), vol. xxix.
- Obituary by
- ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Pictet", p. 207).
- ^ "Natural History Notebook".
- ^ Costa, J.T., 2023, Radical by Nature, p.157
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-969565-2
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
Further reading
- David L. Hull. (1973). Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community. Harvard University Press.