Jean-Baptiste Chevalier de Lamarck

Abstract

The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is one of the most representative figures of modern biology in the nineteenth century. Botanist and zoologist, he was a great systematic taxonomist establishing the current division of the animal kingdom in invertebrates and vertebrates. He also defined the term biology with its modern sense as a set of vital processes. And he was, above all, the first to use the idea of evolution to explain the history of life. His well-known book Philosophie Zoologique gathers his way of thinking about evolution. He is, together with Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel, one of the key elements to understand the formulation and subsequent development of the theory of evolution.