Edmond Perrier
Jean Octave Edmond Perrier (9 May 1844 – 31 July 1921) was a French zoologist born in Tulle. He is known for his studies of invertebrates (annelids and echinoderms). He was the brother of zoologist Rémy Perrier (1861–1936).

Career
On advice from Louis Pasteur, he studied sciences at the , where he took classes in zoology from Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (1821–1901). Afterwards he was a schoolteacher for three years at the college in Agen. In 1869 he obtained his doctorate in natural sciences, later replacing Lacaze-Duthiers at the  (1872).

In 1876 he attained the chair of Natural History (mollusks, worms and zoophytes) at the National Museum of Natural History, and in 1879 became chairman of the Société zoologique de France. In the early 1880s he participated in a series of sea expeditions, during which, he performed investigations of marine life located within the benthic zone, subsequently gaining international recognition as a specialist of marine fauna.

In 1892 he became a member of the Académie des sciences, and even though he was not a doctor of medicine, he became a member of the Académie nationale de médecine (1898). From 1900 to 1919 he was director of the museum of natural history, where during the same time period (1903), he succeeded Henri Filhol (1843–1902) as chair of comparative anatomy.

Perrier was deeply interested in the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In 1909 he was speaker at the inauguration of Lamarck's monument at the National Museum of Natural History. He believed Lamarck to be the true founder in regards to the theory of evolution.

Selected writings 
 Etudes sur l'organisation des Lombriciens terrestres, 1874 – Studies on the organization of terrestrial earthworms.
 La Philosophie zoologique avant Darwin, 1884 – Zoological philosophy prior to Darwin
 Les Coralliaires et les îles Madréporiques..., 1887 – The Coralline islands and Madreporaria.
 Lamarck et le transformisme actuel, 1893. 
 Expéditions scientifiques du Travailleur et du Talisman pendant les années 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883 (1902) – Scientific expeditions of the Travailleur and the Talisman.
 La Femme dans la nature, dans les moeurs dans la légende, dans la société, 1910. 
 La Terre avant l'Histoire. Les Origines de la Vie et de l'Homme, 1920.

Founder of the Friends of the Natural History Museum 
Perrier is the main founder of the Friends of the Natural History Museum Paris society, with Léon Bourgeois as the first president in office from 1907 to 1922.

References

Further reading 
 France savante list of publications
 The Philosophy of Zoology Before Darwin (biographical information)
 Parts of this article's biography are based on a translation of an equivalent article at the French Wikipedia.

External links
 
 

French zoologists
1844 births
1921 deaths
Lamarckism
Lycée Condorcet alumni
Members of the Ligue de la patrie française
People from Tulle
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Commanders of the Legion of Honour
Commanders of the Order of Agricultural Merit
National Museum of Natural History (France) people