Émile Topsent

Who is Émile Topsent?

Émile-Eugène-Aldric Topsent was a French zoologist known for his research of sponges. He was born in Le Havre.

During his career he worked in several laboratories and institutes in western France. From 1919 to 1927 he was curator at the zoological museum in Strasbourg. In 1920 he was appointed chair of the Société zoologique de France.

Topsent described the Atlantic and Mediterranean sponge collections of Prince Albert I of Monaco in three volumes. He named numerous taxa new to science, and his work is considered to be the basis for the modern classification system of Porifera. One of his descriptions involved the hexactinellid sponge Scolymastra joubini, a creature from Antarctic waters that is believed to have a lifespan of 10,000 years.