Background
Caullery was born on September 5, 1868, in Bergues, France. The son of an army captain, Jules Caullery and his wife, Uranie Godbille, Maurice belonged to an old family of northern France.
45 Rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
Caullery was accepted by École Normale Supérieure and rapidly obtained licences in mathematics (1888), physics (1889), and natural sciences (1890), He passed the agrégation in natural sciences in 1891 and received the doctoratès sciences naturelles with a thesis on the compound Ascidiacea in 1895.
45 Rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
Caullery was accepted by École Normale Supérieure and rapidly obtained licences in mathematics (1888), physics (1889), and natural sciences (1890), He passed the agrégation in natural sciences in 1891 and received the doctoratès sciences naturelles with a thesis on the compound Ascidiacea in 1895.
Darwin-Wallace Medal
Caullery was born on September 5, 1868, in Bergues, France. The son of an army captain, Jules Caullery and his wife, Uranie Godbille, Maurice belonged to an old family of northern France.
Caullery was a brilliant student at the lycée of Douai and was accepted by both the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure (1887). He chose the latter and rapidly obtained licences in mathematics (1888), physics (1889), and natural sciences (1890), He passed the agrégation in natural sciences in 1891 and received the doctoratès sciences naturelles with a thesis on the compound Ascidiacea in 1895.
Caullery became préparateur agrégé (zoology) at the École Normale; assistant in physics, chemistry, and natural sciences; lecturer at Lyons from 1896 to 1900; full professor at Marseilles from 1900 to 1903; and lecturer at Paris from 1903 to 1909, when he became professor at the Laboratoire devolution des Êtres Organisés of the Faculté des Sciences, Paris, until his retirement in 1939. In this chair of evolution he succeeded Alfred Giard, whose teaching had inspired him as a student and had oriented his career toward biology. He also was director of the Wimereux marine laboratory.
As a zoologist Caullery left many works, written either alone or in collaboration with his friend Félix Mesnil. He published numerous notices and reports, nearly all of them on marine species. He described new species, but he gave the closest study to animals whose morphology, mode of reproduction, and ecology were of special interest or posed problems from the evolutionary point of view. His early research on the Tunicata enabled him to specify the different origins of the organs of the oozooid and the blasto-zooid. In the fixed polychaete Annelida he analyzed the important transformations connected with the epigamic metamorphosis that manifest themselves during sexual activity. He explained the evolutionary cycle of the Orthonectida, discovered by Giard in 1877. While studying the Annelida gathered by the Dutch ship Siboga from the bottom of the Malay Archipelago, he described a strange organism that he named Siboglinum weberi; it was later recognized as the representative of a new branch created in 1944, the Pogonofora. Parasites greatly interested Caullery, and his important works on parasitic Protozoa (Gregarinida and Actinomyxidia) have precisely defined their sexual cycles. In the Orthonectida, the Turbellaria, and the epicarid Crustacea he observed the transformations brought about by parasites, polymorphism, morphological deterioration, anatomical regression, and hermaphroditism.
A zoologist and researcher of wide scope, Caullery was also an excellent teacher, a brilliant lecturer, and a lucid and rigorous scientific writer. His lectures were models of didactic exposition and served as the basis for numerous richly documented works that focused on the development of biology. He also was attracted to the history of science, particularly to the history of biology and the evolution of ideas. The many problems set forth in publications also held Caullery’s attention. With authority he concerned himself with the Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Belgique, successor to the Bulletin scientifique du département du Nord, founded by Giard. He enlivened the series of works in general biology issued by Doin and was one of the founders of the Presses Universitaires de France.
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1917(French Edition)
1919
Caullery married Sabine Hubert, on November 3, 1900. The couple had four children: Solange, Michel, Denise, and Francine.