Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon

Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, comte de , 1707-88, French naturalist and author. From 1739 he was keeper of the Jardin du Roi (later the Jardin des Plantes) in Paris and made it a center of research during the Enlightenment. He devoted his life to his monumental Histoire naturelle (44 vol., 1749-1804), a popular and brilliantly written compendium of data on natural history interspersed with Buffon's own speculations and theories. Of this work, the volumes Histoire naturelle des animaux and Époques de la nature are of special interest. His famous Discours sur le style was delivered (1753) on his reception into the French Academy. He also contributed to the mathematics of probability.

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707–88) Buffon was an extremely influential French natural philosopher whose extensive works included one of the last speculative cosmogonies: Les Époques de la Nature (1778). Beginning with the formation of the Earth, it covered seven epochs in analogy to the seven days of Creation. He proposed that the Earth was hot at its creation and, from the rate of cooling, calculated its age to be more than 100 000 years.

Buffon, GeorgesLouisLeclerc, Comte de (1707–88)A French naturalist and prolific author, whose 44-volume Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière (first published between 1749 and 1804) was the first work to draw together disconnected items of information about natural history and present them in a coherent form.