Pierre Belon
Oxford Dictionary of Scientists:
Top
Pierre Belon
French naturalist (1517–1564)
Belon was born in Le Mans, France, and studied medicine in Paris. In 1540 he went to Germany to study botany, becoming a leading figure in the 16th-century revival of natural history that followed the great voyages, the invention of printing, and the new artistic realism of the Renaissance.
Between 1546 and 1549 Belon traveled in the eastern Mediterranean countries, comparing the animals and plants he observed with their descriptions by classical authors. The results were published as Les Observations des plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autre pays éstranges (1553; Observations of Many Singularities and Memorable Items in Greece, Asia, Judea, Egypt, Arabia, and Other Foreign Countries). On his travels, Belon was in the habit of investigating the birds and fishes that came to market, and in England he met the Venetian Daniel Barbaro, who had made many drawings of Adriatic fishes. From these sources Belon produced two books on fishes: L'Histoire naturelle des éstranges poissons marins (1551; The Natural History of Foreign Sea Fish) and De aquatilibus (1553). The first is notable for its dissertation on the dolphin, in which he identified the common Atlantic species with the dolphin of the ancients and distinguished it from the porpoise.
Belon's principal achievement is a history of birds, L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555; The Natural History of Birds). An illustrated book of the kind inspired by the drawings of Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, it describes about 200 birds, mostly of European origin. He drew attention to the correspondence between the skeletons of birds and man, an early hint of the discipline of comparative anatomy.
Belon was also interested in geology and botany and is reputed to have introduced the cedar of Lebanon into western Europe. He also established two botanical gardens in France and suggested that many exotic plants might be acclimatized and grown in temperate regions. In many ways a typical figure of the Renaissance, Belon's end was all too typical of that time, for he was murdered in the Bois de Boulogne in 1564.
Oxford Companion to French Literature:
Top
Pierre Belon du Mans
Belon du Mans, Pierre (c.1517-1564). French scientist and diplomat whose adventurous and disputatious life ended in assassination, probably by a Huguenot. Apart from detailed empirical studies of fish, birds, and trees, he published a lively account of his travels around the Mediterranean, Les Observations de plusieurs singularités et choses mémorables (1553).
[Michael Heath]
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
Pierre Belon
| Pierre Belon | |
|---|---|
 Pierre Belon |
|
| Born | 1517 Cérans-Foulletourte |
| Died | 1564 |
| Residence | France |
| Citizenship |  France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | |
Pierre Belon (1517—1564) was a French naturalist, deeply interested in classical Antiquity, who extolled the "happy and desirable renaissance" of "all kinds of good disciplines" in his lifetime.[1] He is sometimes known as Pierre Belon du Mans, or, in the Latin in which his works appeared, as Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus.
Belon was born in 1517 at the hamlet of Soulletière near Cérans-Foulletourte.[2] Encouraged and supported by René du Bellay, bishop of Le Mans. He studied medicine at Paris, where he took the degree of doctor, and then became a pupil of the botanist Valerius Cordus (1515—1544) at Wittenberg, with whom he travelled in Germany.
On his return to France he was taken under the patronage of Cardinal François de Tournon, who furnished him with means for undertaking an extensive scientific journey. Starting in 1546, he travelled through Greece, Crete, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia and Palestine, and returned in 1549. A full account of his Observations on this journey, with illustrations, was published in Paris, 1553. Returning to the household of Cardinal de Tournon at Rome for the conclave, Belon encountered the naturalists Guillaume Rondelet and Hippolyte Salviani. He returned to Paris with his copious notes and began to publish. In 1557 he travelled again, this time in northern Italy, Savoy, the Dauphiné and Auvergne.
Belon was highly favored both by Henry II and by Charles IX, who accorded his lodging in the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne; there he undertook the translations of Dioscurides and Theophrastus. He was assassinated one evening in April 1564, when coming through the Bois on his return from Paris.[3]
Besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several scientific works of considerable value, particularly the Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons (1551), De aquatilibus (1553), and L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555), which entitle him to be regarded as one of the first workers in the science of comparative anatomy.
Works by Belon
All first published in Paris.
- 1551: Histoire de la nature des estranges poissons marins, which includes the first French illustration of a hippopotamus.
- 1553: De aquatilibus[4] A French translation of this treatise on fishes, a foundation of modern ichtyology,[5] was published in three editions at Paris, 1555, and the volume was reprinted in Frankfurt and Zurich.
- 1553: De arboribus Coniferis, Resiniferis aliisque semper virentibus..., a basic text on conifers, pines and evergreens.
- 1553 De admirabili operi antiquorum et rerum suspiciendarum praestantia..., treating the funerary customs of Antiquity, in three volumes, of which separate titles head the second, on mummification (De medicato funere seu cadavere condito et lugubri defunctorum ejulatione) and third (De medicamentis nonnullis, servandi cadaveris vim obtinentibus).
- 1553: Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays étrangèrs.
- 1555: revised edition of the Observations; it was translated into Latin for an international readership de Charles de l'Ecluse, 1589
- 1555: L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux.
References
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pierre Belon |
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pierre Belon". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Pierre_Belon.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Oxford Dictionary of Scientists
A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved.
Read more
Oxford Companion to French Literature
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Read more
Mentioned in
Year 1555
(in Science & Technology)
Konrad Gessner
(history 1450-1789)
Biology
(history 1450-1789)
Observations
(Pierre Belon)
Ottoman Empire
(history 1450-1789)
» More