Jacques Philippe Raymond Draparnaud

Who was Jacques Philippe Raymond Draparnaud?

Jacques Philippe Raymond Draparnaud was a French naturalist, malacologist and botanist.

Draparnaud is considered the father of malacology in France. He was professor of medicine and pathology at the Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier.

Draparnaud understood the breadth of the fauna he studied, as can be seen in a quote from him, in Histoire Naturelle des Mollusques, published in 1805:

Au reste, quoique j'aie décrit pour la France seule un bien plus grand nombre d'espèces que Muller et Schroeter n'ent ont fait connoître pour l'Europe entière, et trois fois autant que Geoffroy et Poiret n'en ont observé dans les environs de Paris, je suis convaincu qu'il reste encore en ce genre bien des découvertes à faire.

Translation:

As for the remainder, even though I have described for France a greater number of species than Müller and Schroeter made known for the whole of Europe, and three times as many as Geoffroy and Poiret observed around Paris, still I am convinced that there remain many more discoveries of this kind to be made.