Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 1772-19 June 1844) was a French naturalist who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his Egyptian Campaign.
Biography[]
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was born in Etampes, Essonne, France in 1772, and he studied natural philosophy before becoming sub-keeper and assistant demonstrator of the cabinet of natural history in 1793. He became a professor at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in June 1793 as well as chair of zoology, and he formed a menagerie at that institution the same year. He co-authored several memoirs on national history with Georges Cuvier in 1794. In 1798, he participated in Napoleon's great scientific expedition to Egypt, and, on the fall of Alexandria to the British in 1801, he resisted the British general's claim on the collections of the expedition. He returned to Paris in January 1802 and was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1807; a year later, Napoleon sent him to procure collections from Portugal's museums, eventually retaining them as a permanent possession for his country. He later expanded his interest to anatomical study, and he went blind in 1840, resigned his chair at the museum in 1841, and died in 1844.