science · 11 October 1915 · 109 years ago
death
Died 11 Oct 1915 at age 91 (born 22 Dec 1823).
French entomologist and author who popularized insect natural history. He wrote ten volumes of Souvenirs entomologiques (1879-1907) in which he recorded his perceptive field observations of insect behaviour. Although his career began as a professor of physics, and in 1866 he isolated alizarin (the colouring agent in madder), his life work became the study of insects, about which he wrote in elegant prose. From his study of parasitic wasps he deduced that much of the wasp's behaviour is inherited and not learned. Victor Hugo dubbed him “the insects' Homer” and Edmond Rostand named him the “Virgil of insects.” Darwin cited him as “an incomparable observer.”
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