Background
Alfred Giard was born on August 8, 1846, in Valenciennes, France.
45 Rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
Giard entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1867. He defended his doctoral thesis on the compound ascidians in 1872.
France
Alfred Mathieu Giard
Botanist educator scientist Zoologist
Alfred Giard was born on August 8, 1846, in Valenciennes, France.
Giard was an extraordinarily gifted child who, by the age of fifteen, had already acquired, under the influence of his father, an extensive knowledge of insects and plants. Following secondary studies at the lycée in Valenciennes, he entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1867. He defended his doctoral thesis on the compound ascidians in 1872.
In 1871 Giard was named préparateur at École Normale Supérieure. He defended his doctoral thesis on the compound ascidians in 1872, then was successively professor at the Faculté des Sciences of Lille, lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure, and professor at the Faculté des Sciences of Paris, holding the chair of evolution of living organisms from 1888 until his death following a short illness.
Giard was a morphologist, a phylogenist, an ethologist - a complete naturalist who was endowed with a remarkable memory and possessed prodigious factual knowledge. Moreover, he had the ability to rank facts and coordinate them to bring out the ideas of general biology.
In 1874, with his own funds, he founded the biological station at Wimereux in order to introduce his students to marine and terrestrial flora and fauna. He was a great laboratory director, and he rapidly formed a brilliant school of zoology in Lille.
Giard was the opposite of a specialist. He was a remarkable observer and the variety of his observations stimulated him to study diverse animals. He discovered the Orthonectida (parasites of the Ophiurida) in 1877, and a member of the Turbellaria (Fecampia), a parasite of the higher crustaceans. With J. Bonnier he carried out research on the crustaceans, notably on the Epicaridea (parasitic isopods) and on the Bopyridae.
Giard investigated several problems of general biology: regeneration (hypotypic regeneration), metamorphosis, sexuality, experimental parthenogenesis, merogenesis, hybridization, autotomy, convergence, mimetism, and anhydrobiosis. He defined poecilogony and parasitic castration.
Never an advocate of technique - be it injections or histological sections or preparations - Giard considered the examination of living creatures in their environment to be superior to that of materials that were preserved or cut in pieces. One ought always to begin with examination.
Giard was rapidly able to free himself from the tenor of instruction he had received, especially from J. H. Lacaze-Duthiers, who for a long time opposed his nomination to Paris. He became a convinced follower of transformism, a doctrine opposed by his contemporaries, and his courses were filled with new ideas already widespread abroad. The transformist hypotheses overturned the general classification of animals. Giard was among the first to bring together the mollusks and the Annelida, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, abd Gephyrea. In 1876 he united them under the name Gymnotoca - the name was forgotten, but the grouping was recognized by Emil Hatschek, who termed its members the Trochozoa.
Giard created new biological terms, some of which became classic. He was also greatly interested in scientific societies and attempted to guide their activity. In 1878 he became editor of the Bulletin scientifique du Nord, ten years later this local journal became the Bulletin scientifique de la France et de la Belgique.
From 1882 to 1885 Giard sat in the Chamber of Deputies as the member from Valenciennes; but, failing to win reelection in 1885, he gave up politics.
In accepting transformism as fact and interpreting nature accordingly, Giard was under the influence of Ernst Haeckel. He thought that Lamarckism and Darwinism complemented each other. The primordial cause of variation resided in the actions of external agents, which constituted the primary factors of evolution (a Lamarckian idea). Natural selection intervened only as a secondary factor of great power (a Darwinian idea). Yet Giard preferred Lamarckism to Darwinism and strove to glorify Lamarck. Heredity, sexual selection, and physiological selection were also secondary factors. He did not accept particulate theories of heredity, and he rejected all theories based on unverifiable internal tendencies, such as the orthogenesis conceived by Teodor Einmer.
Giard was a member of Lille Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, Linnean Society of London.