1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Claparède, Jean Louis

CLAPARÈDE, JEAN LOUIS RENÉ ANTOINE ÉDOUARD (1832–1870), Swiss naturalist, was born at Geneva on the 24th of April 1832. He belonged to a French family, some members of which had taken refuge in that city after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1852 he began to study medicine and natural science at Berlin, where he was greatly influenced by J. Müller and C. G. Ehrenberg, the former being at that period engaged in his important researches on the Echinoderms. In 1855 he accompanied Müller to Norway, and there spent two months on a desolate reef that he might obtain satisfactory observations. The latter part of his stay at Berlin he devoted, along with J. Lachmann, to the study of the Infusoria and Rhizopods. In 1857 he obtained the degree of doctor, and in 1862 he was chosen professor of comparative anatomy at Geneva. In 1859 he visited England, and in company with W. B. Carpenter made a voyage to the Hebrides; and in 1863 he spent some months in the Bay of Biscay. On the appearance of Darwin’s work on the Origin of Species, he adopted his theories and published a valuable series of articles on the subject in the Revue Germanique (1861). During 1865 and 1866 ill-health rendered him incapable of work, and he determined to pass the winter of 1866–1867 in Naples. The change of climate produced some amelioration, and his energy was attested by two elaborate volumes on the Annelidae of the gulf. He again visited Naples with advantage in 1868; but in 1870, instead of recovering as before, he grew worse, and on the 31st of May he died at Siena on his way home. His Recherches sur la structure des annélides sédentaires were published posthumously in 1873.