Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest

Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest was a French zoologist and author, born in 1784, the son of Nicolas Desmarest. A disciple of Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart, he succeeded Pierre Andre Latreille in 1815 as professor of zoology at the veterinary school of Alfort, and he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1819 and to the French national academy of medicine in 1820. His best known book, Mammalogie of 1820, contained a comprehensive list of all the mammals then known, both living forms and extinct forms known only from fossils, and he was one of the first scientists to give animals both a genus and a species name as a matter of routine. He also wrote on tanagers and manakins, on crustaceans, and with Duméril on a large dictionary of natural sciences. Desmarest's hutia and the brown algae genus Desmarestia are named after him.