User:Mark.scherz/sandbox

Georges Petit (Zoologist)

Georges Jean-Jacques Petit (born 4 October 1892 in Bergerac ; died 29 November 1973 in Montpellier ) was a French zoologist, marine biologist, and historian of the natural sciences.

Petit's mother was half-Italian, born in Rome, and his father from Périgord, and a Professor of Literature at a school in Bergerac. He studied Natural Sciences in Bordeaux, receiving his License in 1913 and a 'diplôme d'études supériueres' in anatomy in 1914. After serving in WW1, he began work at the Muséum national d'histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris as a preparator in the department of ichythyology. His work was focussed particularly on oceanic organisms, especially Sirenians, fishes, and marine invertebrates. In 1925 he completed his doctoral thesis on Sirenians.

Petit undertook voyages to Madagascar from 1920–1922, 1925–1927, and 1932, accompanied by his wife, sampling animals there to bring back to the MNHN Paris. Among these collections there were many species new to science, including fishes and frogs; some of the amphibians were described as new species by Fernand Angel. He also conducted two surveys on fishes of Albania (Lake Ohrid) from 1928–1929.

Petit was named Assistant Director of Malacology of the MNHN in 1933, but then left to take up a lectureship in the Faculty of Science in Marseille in 1938, ultimately becoming a professor in 1942. He directed the Natural History Museum of Marseille from 1941–1948, as well as the local section of the Société de Biologie from 1944–1946. In 1947 he was named Chair of Marine Biology of the Faculty of Sciences of Paris, and Director of the Arago Laboratory of Marine Biology in Banylus-sur-Mer. He was then named Honorary Professor of Marine Biology in Sorbonne.

Petit died of complications following a painful surgery.

Notable works by Petit

 * L'Industrie des pêches à Madagascar (1930)
 * Zoologie de Madagascar (1932)(co-authored with G. Grandidier)
 * Histoire de la zoologie des origines à Linné (1962)
 * Les Mammiféres marins de l'ordre des Siréniens et la légende des sirénes (note préliminaire). Anthropologie, 1924:294–295
 * Histoire de la création des réserves naturelles à Madagascar et état actuel de leur organisation. C.R. Séances Soc. Biogéogr. 82:43-45 (1933)
 * Aristote et la biologie marine : les Cétacés avec remarques sur la classification des animaux dans l'œuvre du Stagirite. Actes XIe Congrès Int. Hist. Sciences, V:41–49