Cuvier, the chief of modern comparative anatomists, the first to unite the palæontology of extinct forms with the anatomy of the extant, important also as an educationist. Leopold Christian Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier, better known by his adopted literary title Georges Cuvier, was born on the 24th August 1769, in the town of Montbéliard, at that time belonging to Württemberg. His ancestors were Protestant refugees from the Jura. He was destined by his parents for the church, but early exhibited a predisposition for natural history. In his education at Stuttgart, he came under the happy influence of the botanist Kerner and the zoologist Kielmeyer. At the age of eighteen he became tutor in a family living near Caen, in Normandy. There the abundant fossil Terebratulæ of the shore, the cuttle-fish and other molluscs landed by the waves, excited his eager interest, and became subjects of close study. There too he was introduced to Geoffroy St-Hilaire and other Parisian savants. Geoffroy at once recognised his abilities, and invited him to Paris. Cuvier accepted the invitation, became first assistant, and then professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Jardin des Plantes. Elected a member of the French Institute in 1795, he became in 1803 permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. In 1808 he undertook the reorganisation of public instruction, and shortly before the fall of Napoleon was admitted into the Council of State. After the Restoration he was made Chancellor of the University of Paris. After a visit to England in 1818, where he was received with great honour, he was, in 1819, admitted into the cabinet by Louis XVIII., and in 1826 was made grand-officer of the Legion of Honour. His decided opposition to the royal measures for restricting the freedom of the press lost him the favour of Charles X. Under Louis-Philippe he was made a peer of France (Baron Cuvier) in 1831, and in the following year he was nominated Minister of the Interior. Then his career was terminated suddenly from an attack of paralysis of which he died, May 13, 1832.
Cuvier's life was characterised by extraordinary activity. In his plans for the extension and improvement of national education, in his efforts for the welfare of the French Protestant Church, and in his scientific work, he was alike zealous and indefatigable. On every hand he gave evidence of gigantic intellect, and of honest, resolute character. He was conspicuous for an unsurpassed grasp of concrete facts, rather than for originality of suggestion or power of generalisation, and remained a vigorous and formidable opponent of the Theory of Descent.
In several departments of zoology, Cuvier's indefatigable industry and giant intelligence achieved great progress. (1) By marvellous energy in collecting, examining, and dissecting, he vastly increased the circle of accurately known forms, both living and extinct. (2) This was done, however, in a way which combined depth of insight with increasing breadth of view. He penetrated below external form to the internal structure, and not content with empirical dissection, rationalised his results in the first systematic comparative anatomy. His profound anatomical studies led him further to appreciate more clearly than heretofore the unity of the organism and the mutual dependence of its parts. In clearly defining the principle of the correlation of organs, he recognised, to quote his memorable words, that 'the organism forms a connected unity, in which the single parts cannot change without bringing about modifications in the other parts.' (3) In his hands classification became more natural, being more thoroughly based on real similarities of structure, and less on superficial resemblances. He recognised the existence of four great types—Vertebrate, Mollusc, Articulate, and Radiate, a classification independently confirmed by the embryological researches of Von Baer. Although his four types are now known to give a false simplicity to nature, the establishing of structural classification, followed out in his subdivisions, introduced a new order in the animal kingdom. (4) Before his work, fossil forms had been very scantily known, and still less understood. His researches, however, especially among vertebrate remains, not only revealed an undreamt-of wealth of entombed forms, but disclosed to some extent the relation between the living and the dead. For the first time palæontology was linked to comparative anatomy, and the new contact brought fresh light. Yet it must be remembered that to him the Linnean dogma of the constancy of species seemed unassailable. Clear as he was in regard to the existence of fundamental and recurrent types, he was as determinedly opposed to the suggestion of Buffon, Lamarck, and others, that animals were connected by common descent.
Among Cuvier's more important works are the following: Leçons d'Anatomie Comparée (1801-5); L'Anatomie des Mollusques (1816); Recherches sur les Ossements Fossils des Quadrupèdes (1821-24); Discours sur les Révolutions de la Surface du Globe (introduction to the last); Histoire naturelle des Poissons (1828-49), written in concert with Valenciennes. Better known perhaps than any of these is the work which has passed through so many editors' hands—Le Règne Animal distribué d'après son Organisation (1817), more familiar in the enlarged and elaborated form which it received under the editorship of Cuvier's school. Important too for the history of zoology are numerous éloges and historic reports delivered on various occasions throughout Cuvier's life.
See Mrs R. Lee's Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (Lond. 1833); Pasquier's Eloge de Cuvier (Paris, 1833); Carus's Geschichte der Zoologie (Munich, 1872); Haeckel's History of Creation (Lond. 1876).