René Lesson

René Primevère Lesson (1794 to 1849) was a French naval surgeon and pharmacist who became a leading naturalist, ornithologist and herpetologist. Born at Rochefort, he entered the Naval Medical School there at sixteen and served in the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, as third surgeon on the frigate Saale in 1811 and second surgeon on the Regulus in 1813. In 1816 he changed his classification to pharmacist. He sailed on Duperrey's round-the-world voyage of La Coquille from 1822 to 1825, collecting natural history specimens, and in the Moluccas and New Guinea he became the first naturalist to see birds of paradise in the wild. He then spent years writing the vertebrate volumes of the voyage account and many books on birds, and he described numerous amphibians and reptiles. His medical contributions include the two-volume Manuel d'histoire naturelle médicale et de pharmacographie of 1833, written as a handbook for naval surgeons. He was professor of pharmacy from 1831 and became the top-ranking naval pharmacist at Rochefort in 1835. He was named a corresponding member of the Académie de Médecine in 1828, a correspondent of the Académie des Sciences in 1833, and received the Légion d'honneur in 1847. He died on 28 April 1849.