Pierre Belon (1517–1564) was a French traveler, naturalist, writer, and diplomat.
University of Paris, Paris, France
Belon never acquired the doctorate, but in 1560 he obtained the licentiate in medicine from the Paris Faculty of Medicine.
1551
A page from Histoire de la nature des estranges poissons marins.
1555
A comparison of the skeleton of birds and man in Natural History of Birds.
University of Paris, Paris, France
Belon never acquired the doctorate, but in 1560 he obtained the licentiate in medicine from the Paris Faculty of Medicine.
François de Tournon, French Augustinian monk, an archbishop, diplomat, courtier, and cardinal.
Valerius Cordus, German physician and botanist.
Guillaume Rondelet, Regius professor of medicine at the University of Montpellier in southern France and Chancellor of the University between 1556 and his death in 1566.
Hippolito Salviani (1514–1572) was an Italian physician, scholar, and naturalist noted for his Renaissance book Aquatilium animalium historiae.
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Botanist naturalist scientist Zoologist
Pierre Belon was born around 1517 near Le Mans, Sarthe, France. Belon’s birthplace - or the house traditionally considered as such - still stands at Soultiere. Practically nothing is known of his ancestry, and his biographer, Paul Delaunay, has been unable to pierce the mystery surrounding his origins. It is known that he came from an obscure and not wealthy family.
At first, as a boy, he was apprenticed to an apothecary at Foulletourte. After that became a pupil of the botanist Valerius Cordus (1515 - 1544) at Wittenberg. Belon never acquired the doctorate, but in 1560 he obtained the licentiate in medicine from the Paris Faculty of Medicine.
About 1535 Belon became apothecary to Guillaume Duprat, bishop of Clermont. In the course of subsequent wanderings (in Flanders and England) and zoological research, he came back to the Auvergne. About that time he became the protégé of René du Bellay, bishop of Le Mans, a situation that enabled him to go to the University of Wittenberg and study under the botanist Valerius Cordus.
In 1542 he went to Paris, where Duprat recommended him as an apothecary to François Cardinal de Toumon. In his Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins (1551), Belon presented an orderly classification of fish that included the sturgeon, the tuna, the malarmat (peristedion), the dolphin, and the hippopotamus. The last, incidentally, was drawn from Egyptian sculpture. Nevertheless, Belon can be considered the originator of comparative anatomy.
By the same token, he depicted a porpoise embryo and set forth the first notions of embryology. Belon enriched the biological sciences by new observations and contributed greatly to the progress of the natural sciences in the sixteenth century. His learning was not derived solely from books. He was one of the first explorer-naturalists; and between 1546 and 1550 he undertook long voyages through Greece, Asia, Judaea, Egypt, Arabia, and other foreign countries. He passed through Constantinople, and in Rome he met the zoologists Rondelet and Salviani.
Belon was also a talented botanist and recorded the results of his observations in a beautiful work adorned with woodcuts showing, for the first time, several plants of the Near East, including Platanus orientalis, Umbilicus pendulinus, Acacia vera, and Caucalis orientalis. He was more interested in the practical uses of plants than in their scientific description. He also advocated the acclimatization of exotic plants in France.
Belon dwelt at great length on the applications of medicinal substances. He clarified the use of bitumen, which the ancient Egyptians had used for mummifying ing corpses. Its agglutinative and antiputrefactive properties had induced physicians to use it therapeutically.
Belon, who was highly favored both by Henry II and by Charles IX. Charles IX installed him at the Château de Madrid and granted him a pension. Belon was murdered in the Bois de Boulogne under mysterious circumstances. He was only forty-seven.
Belon succeeded in winning the confidence of the great and was famous during his lifetime. His works were translated by Charles de Fescluse and Ulisse Aldrovandi, both of whom recognized his authority. Besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several scientific works of considerable value, particularly the Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons (1551), De aquatilibus (1553), and L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555), which entitle him to be regarded as one of the first workers in the science of comparative anatomy.
Charles Plumier dedicated the species Bellonia (Rubiaceae) to Belon. Charles Alexandre Filleul, a sculptor from Le Mans, erected a statue to him in Le Mans in 1887. Also, a genus in the plant family Gesneriaceae was named as Bellonia in his honor by Charles Plumier. The saltwater fish genus Belone was also named after him by the preeminent ichthyologist Georges Cuvier, along with the family and order it belongs to, Belonidae and Beloniformes respectively.
Belon discarded the bases of the comparative method and was not at all afraid of drawing parallels between human and bird skeletons. He was the first to bring order into the world of feathered animals, distinguishing between raptorial birds, diurnal birds of prey, web-footed birds, river birds, field birds, etc. Belon’s observations were generally correct. He looked at the world as an analyst devoted to detail.
Quotes from others about the person
Pavlov called him the “prophet of comparative anatomy.”
François de Tournon (1489 in Tournon-sur-Rhône – 1562 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was a French Augustinian monk, an archbishop, diplomat, courtier, and cardinal.
Valerius Cordus (February 18, 1515 – September 25, 1544) was a German physician and botanist who authored one of the greatest pharmacopeias and one of the most celebrated herbals in history.
Guillaume Rondelet (27 September 1507 – 30 July 1566), known also as Rondeletus (Rondeletius), was Regius professor of medicine at the University of Montpellier in southern France and Chancellor of the University between 1556 and his death in 1566.
Hippolito Salviani (1514–1572) was an Italian physician, scholar, and naturalist, noted for his Renaissance book Aquatilium animalium historiae, depicting hundreds of Mediterranean fish, some from Illyria, and a few mollusks. He also wrote works on medicine, such as that dealing with Galen's theory of crises, and a topical play.
