Pierre Belon

Pierre Belon was a French explorer, naturalist, writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architecture and Egyptology. He is sometimes known as Pierre Belon du Mans, or, in the Latin in which his works appeared, as Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus. Ivan Pavlov called him the prophet of comparative anatomy.

Belon was born in 1517 at the hamlet of Souletire near CransFoulletourte. His family was not wealthy and as a boy, he worked as an apprentice at an apothecary at Foulletourte. He later worked as an apothecary to the bishop of Clermont, Guillaume Duprat. He then travelled through Flanders and England, taking a keen interest in zoology. When he returned to Auvergne, he was supported by Ren du Bellay, bishop of Le Mans, to study at the University of Wittenberg with the botanist Valerius Cordus . He travelled around Germany with Cordus and on his arrival at Thionville, was arrested on suspicions that he was a Lutheran. He was released by the interventions of a certain Dehamme who was an admirer of his friend from Paris, the poet Pierre Ronsard. Around 1542 he studied medicine at Paris, and obtained a licentiate in medicine although he never took the degree of doctor. With the recommendation of Duprat, he became an apothecary to Cardinal Franois de Tournon. Under this patronage, he was abl

Source: Wikipedia