Jean Vincent Félix Lamouroux was a French biologist and naturalist noted for his seminal work with algae; he was the first to make the distinction between green, brown and red algae, and was also interested in other classification systems in marine biology. He also served as a professor of natural history at the University of Caen.
Background
Jean Vincent Félix Lamouroux was born on May 3, 1779, in Agen, France. The son of Claude Lamouroux and Catherine Langayrou, he came from a well-to-do merchant family. His father was an intellectual who made his livelihood in manufacturing, but who was also a musician, a one-term mayor of Agen, and a co-founder of the Academic Society of Agen.
Education
Lamouroux was first interested in botany as an amateur, under the guidance of F. B. de Saint-Amans, and traveled through southern France and Spain to broaden his knowledge of the subject. When the printed calico factory that his father managed suffered a severe reverse, Lamouroux had to plan on supporting himself. He went to Paris to complete his medical studies and received the Doctor of medicine degree in 1809. Lamouroux was later attracted to the study of marine algae by his friend J. B. Bory de Saint-Vincent.
Career
Named an assistant professor of natural history at Caen in 1809, Lamouroux became a full professor at the Faculty of Science in 1810. In 1805 he published his first memoir, which was illustrated with thirty-six engraved plates depicting several species of Fucus found along the coasts of Europe and in tropical regions. At that time Fucus was considered to include all marine algae that, when viewed by the naked eye or under a magnifying glass, did not exhibit a filamentous cellular structure (such as was seen among the articulated thallophytes). Moreover, both brown algae and red algae were indiscriminately attributed to this genus. Having recognized the heterogeneity of Fucus, Lamouroux described many new genera (Dictyopteris, Amansia, Bryopsis, Caulerpa, and others) in memoirs and in the first seven volumes of Bory de Saint-Vincent’s Dictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle.
In Essai sur les genres de la famille des Thalassiophytes inarticulés Lamouroux proposed a general classification of the marine algae, which he divided into Fucaceae, Florideae, Dictyoteae, Ulvaccae, Alcyonideae, and Spongodieae. Except for the last two, these groups have been maintained in present classifications, although with modifications regarding limits and hierarchy. For example, Lamouroux’s Fucaceae include not only the current Fucales, Laminariales, and Desmarestiales but also certain Rhodophyceae (Furcellaria). The Florideae are more homogeneous, and in defining them Lamouroux employed a biochemical characteristic that has proved to be of fundamental value: the red color. Furthermore, he was the first to insist on the existence, among these algae, of two distinct types of reproductive organs: tubercles containing “seeds” (cystocarps) and capsules whose contents are almost invariably tripartite (tetrasporocysts). Until then it was assumed, following Dawson Turner and J. C. Mertens, that these two types of reproductive organs corresponded to different stages in the development of the same organ.
Lamouroux thus deserves credit for separating for the first time, even if imperfectly, the brown, red, and green algae, thus eliminating a good deal of confusion. Lamouroux considered the Essai of 1813 merely a preliminary exposition which he intended to extend to the nonarticulated thalassiophytes, but he died before he could do so. Lamouroux also wrote Histoire des Polypiers coralligenes flexihles, in which he described, besides such marine animals as hydrozoa and bryozoa, new genera of calcified algae previously joined with the polyparies (Neomeris, Cymopolia, Halimeda, Liagora, Galaxaura).