Background
Michèle de Saint Laurent was born on December 9, 1926 at Fontainebleau, near Paris. Her father, an army officer, retired on grounds of ill health in 1938 and moved with his family to Plestin-les-Grèves in Brittany. He died in 1939.
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Michele Saint Laurent
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied general biology at the University of Paris under Pierre-Paul Grassé, earning her Diplôme de Licence in 1954.
Career
She spent most of her career at the Muséum national d"histoire naturelle in Paris, working on the systematics of decapod crustaceans. Her major contributions were to hermit crabs and Thalassinidea, and she also co-described Neoglyphea, a living fossil discovered in 1975. During the Second World War, Michèle"s mother concealed British airmen from the Nazi regime, for which she was convicted in 1942 by a military tribunal and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died in 1944.
She started undertaking scientific research even before finishing her degree, during a term spent at the Institut Pasteur under Robert Deschiens, where she investigated the effect of iron salts on the molluscs that transmit schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia or snail fever).
The resulting paper brought her into contact with staff at the Muséum national d"histoire naturelle in Paris, where Jacques Forest suggested she study the larvae of hermit crabs. From 1955 until 1960, she worked at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research), at their laboratory at Banyuls-sur-Mer.
Thereafter, she returned to the Paris museum. In 1965, Michèle divorced, and returned to using her maiden name.
She retired on October 1, 1992, and split her time between her continued research activities and spending time at a house in Brittany.
She had suffered for years from hepatitis C and contracted liver cancer in 2001. She died following a fall on July 11, 2003.
