Portrait of Daubenton

Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716–1799) was a French naturalist and physician, and the first director of the National Museum of Natural History.
Having qualified as a doctor, he became an invaluable assistant to the great naturalist Buffon in the fields of dissection and anatomical study.
One historian asserts: ‘Buffon found in Daubenton everything he lacked: the most deft hand, the most sure eye. Everything relating to anatomy in the first fifteen volumes of Buffon’s work is by Daubenton.’
The two men collaborated for ten years on updating the Natural History of Animals. In it, Daubenton describes nearly two hundred species of quadrupeds. Some of the anatomical descriptions are masterpieces of precision which, until the 19th century, formed one of the foundations of comparative anatomy.
Among the first to apply comparative anatomy to fossil species, Daubenton refuted the belief in the existence of giants. Through his observation of the joints of the lower limbs, he also refuted the notion that the orangutan could be a ‘wild man’.
Daubenton was behind the rise of the King’s Cabinet of Curiosities, foreshadowing the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris.