Félix Archimède Pouchet

Who was Félix Archimède Pouchet?

Félix-Archimède Pouchet was a French naturalist and a leading proponent of spontaneous generation of life from non-living materials, and as such an opponent of Louis Pasteur's germ theory. He was the father of Georges Pouchet, a professor of comparative anatomy.

From 1828 he was director of the Rouen Museum of Natural History and the Rouen Jardin des Plantes. Later, in 1838, he became professor at the School of Medicine at Rouen. His major scientific work Hétérogénie was published in 1859. He also wrote a layperson's encyclopedia The Universe, published in 1870, which gives an overview of the sciences, but in which Pouchet ridicules Louis Pasteur's theories and atomic theory.

In 1847 Felix-Archimede Pouchet effectively launched the study of the physiology of cytology.