About the Author

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count of Buffon (1707-1788), treasurer of the Academy of Sciences, member of French Academy, the Royal Society of London, the Edinburgh Academy, the Saint Petersburg Academy and the Institute of Bologna, was named, in 1739, Governor of the Jardin du Roi in Paris and was responsible for restructuring this institute and founding the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He was most famous for his masterpiece Histoire Naturelle, Generale et Particuliere, in which he shows the similarities between man and monkey, and the possibility of common genealogy.