René-Édouard Claparède

René-Édouard Claparède (1832 to 1871) was a Swiss anatomist and zoologist, born at Chancy near Geneva into a Protestant family that had moved to Geneva from Languedoc after 1685. He was educated in Geneva and in Berlin, where he attended the lectures of Johannes Peter Müller, then worked as an assistant to François Jules Pictet de la Rive at the Geneva Academy, where in 1862 he became professor of comparative anatomy. His research dealt with the structure of infusoria, the anatomy of annelids, the histology of earthworms, the embryology of arthropods and the evolution of spiders, and several species carry the epithet claparedii in his memory. He stressed the importance of studying and drawing living or freshly killed animals and left no museum specimens. He died of tuberculosis at Siena at the age of 39.