Pierre Paul Grasse

Vocation

Notable

French zoologist, author of over 300 publications including the influential 52-volume Traité de Zoologie. He was an expert on termites. He went on to study medicine at the University of Bordeaux and studied biology in parallel, including the lectures of the entomologist Jean de Feytaud (1881–1973). Mobilized during World War I, he was forced to interrupt his studies during four years. By the end of the war he was a military surgeon. Grassé continued his studies in Paris, focusing exclusively on science. He obtained his Licence in Biology and frequented the laboratory of biologist Étienne Rabaud (1868–1956). He abandoned his preparations for the agrégation to accept a position as professor in the École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier(1921), where the department of zoology was led by François Picard (1879–1939. He became the assistant of Octave Duboscq (1868–1943) who oriented the young Grassé toward the study of protozoan parasites. After the departure of Duboscq to Paris, Grassé worked for Eugène Bataillon (1864–1953) and there discovered techniques for experimental embryology. In 1926, Grassé became vice-director of the École supérieure de sériciculture. In 1929, Grassé became professor of zoology at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand. He supervised the theses of several students on insects. He conducted his first field research trip in Africa in 1933-1934, and returned there several times (1938–1939, 1945, 1948). During these trips he studied termites, and became one of the great specialists on these insects. In 1935, he became an Assistant Professor at the Université de Paris where he worked alongside Germaine Cousin (1896–1992), and received the Prix Gadeau de Kerville de la Société entomologique de France for his work on orthoptera and termites. In 1939 he chaired the Société zoologique de France and in 1941 the Société entomologique de France. After having been briefly mobilized in Tours, in 1944 he succeeded Maurice Caullery as Chair in Zoology and the Evolution of Beings. Grassé was elected a member of the Académie des sciences on November 29, 1948, in the anatomy and zoology sector and presided over the institution in 1967. In 1976 he changed sectors, into the newly created animal and vegetal biology sector. Grassé received numerous honours and titles during his career: commander of the Légion d'honneur, doctorhonoris causa of several universities. He was also a member of several academic societies, including the New York Academy of Sciences and The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium. He died 9 July 1985. Link to Wikipedia biography