Portal:Crustaceans/Selected biography/4

Henri Milne-Edwards (Bruges, October 23, 1800 – Paris, July 29, 1885) was an eminent French zoologist. He was the 27th child of an English father (Wiliam Edwards) and a French mother (Elisabeth Vaux). Henri was born in Bruges, now in Belgium, but then part of the French Republic, and he spent most of his life in France. Henri was brought up in Paris by his older brother William Edwards, a physiologist. After studying medicine in Paris, his passion for natural history prevailed, and he studied the "lower forms" of animal life. He studied under Georges Cuvier and befriended Jean Victoire Audouin. In 1832, Milne-Edwards became professor of hygiene and natural history at the Collège Central des Arts et Manufactures. In 1841, after the death of Audouin, Milne-Edwards succeeded him at the chair of entomology at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1862, he succeeded Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the long-vacant chair of zoology.

Much of his original work was published in the Annales des sciences naturelles, which he edited from 1834. His Histoire naturelle des Crustacés (1837–1841), long remained a standard work; other works include Histoire naturelle des coralliaires (1858–1860), Leçons sur la physiologie et l'anatomie comparée de l'homme et des animaux (1857–1881), and a work on the elements of zoology, originally published in 1834, but subsequently remodelled, which enjoyed an enormous circulation.