Biography[edit]Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was born in Bazentin, Picardy, northern France,[4] as the eleventh child in an impoverished aristocratic family.[Note 2] Male members of the Lamarck family had traditionally served in the French army. Lamarck's eldest brother was killed in combat at the Siege of Bergen op Zoom, and two other brothers were still in service when Lamarck was in his teenage years. Yielding to the wishes of his father, Lamarck enrolled in a Jesuit college in Amiens in the late 1750s.[4]After his father died in 1760, Lamarck bought himself a horse, and rode across the country to join the French army, which was in Germany at the time. Lamarck showed great physical courage on the battlefield in the Pomeranian War with Prussia, and he was even nominated for the lieutenancy.[4] Lamarck's company was left exposed to the direct artillery fire of their enemies, and was quickly reduced to just fourteen men – with no officers. One of the men suggested that the puny, seventeen-year-old volunteer should assume command and order a withdrawal from the field; but although Lamarck accepted command, he insisted they remain where they had been posted until relieved.When their colonel reached the remains of their company, this display of courage and loyalty impressed him so much that Lamarck was promoted to officer on the spot. However, when one of his comrades playfully lifted him by the head, he sustained an inflammation in the lymphatic glands of the neck, and he was sent to Paris to receive treatment.[4] He underwent a complicated operation, and continued his treatment for a year.[10] He was awarded a commission and settled at his post in Monaco. It was there that he encountered Traité des plantes usuelles, a botany book by James Francis Chomel.[4]Lamarck by Charles Thévenin (c. 1802)With a reduced pension of only 400 francs a year, Lamarck resolved to pursue a profession. He attempted to study medicine, and supported himself by working in a bank office.[4] Lamarck studied medicine for four years, but gave it up under his elder brother's persuasion. He was interested in botany, especially after his visits to the Jardin du Roi, and he became a student under Bernard de Jussieu, a notable French naturalist.[4] Under Jussieu, Lamarck spent ten years studying French flora.After his studies, in 1778, he published some of his observations and results in a three-volume work, entitled Flore françoise. Lamarck's work was respected by many scholars, and it launched him into prominence in French science. On August 8, 1778, Lamarck married Marie Anne Rosalie Delaporte.[11] Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, one of the top French scientists of the day, mentored Lamarck, and helped him gain membership to the French Academy of Sciences in 1779 and a commission as a Royal Botanist in 1781, in which he traveled to foreign botanical gardens and museums.[12] Lamarck's first son, André, was born on April 22, 1781, and he made his colleague André Thouin the child's godfather.In his two years of travel, Lamarck collected rare plants that were not available in the Royal Garden, and also other objects of natural history, such as minerals and ores, that were not found in French museums. On January 7, 1786, his second son, Antoine, was born, and Lamarck chose Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Bernard de Jussieu's nephew, as the boy's godfather.[13] On April 21 of the following year, Charles René, Lamarck's third son, was born. René Louiche Desfontaines, a professor of botany at the Royal Garden, was the boy's godfather, and Lamarck's elder sister, Marie Charlotte Pelagie De Monet was the godmother.[13] In 1788, Buffon's successor at the position of Intendant of the Royal Garden, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, comte d'Angiviller, created a position for Lamarck, with a yearly salary of 1,000 francs, as the keeper of the herbarium of the Royal Garden.[4]In 1790, at the height of the French Revolution, Lamarck changed the name of the Royal Garden from Jardin du Roi to Jardin des Plantes, a name that did not imply such a close association with King Louis XVI.[14] Lamarck had worked as the keeper of the herbarium for five years before he was appointed curator and professor of invertebrate zoology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in 1793.[4] During his time at the herbarium, Lamarck's wife gave birth to three more children before dying on September 27, 1792. With the official title of "Professeur d'Histoire naturelle des Insectes et des Vers", Lamarck received a salary of nearly 2,500 francs per year.[15] The following year on October 9, he married Charlotte Reverdy, who was thirty years his junior.[13] On September 26, 1794, Lamarck was appointed to serve as secretary of the assembly of professors for the museum for a period of one year. In 1797, Charlotte died, and he married Julie Mallet the following year; she died in 1819.[13]
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