René-Édouard Claparède

Life & Legacy

René-Édouard Claparède (French: [klapaʁɛd]; 24 April 1832, Chancy – 31 May 1871, Siena) was a Swiss anatomist.
The Claparède family was Protestant and originally from Languedoc. They moved to Geneva after Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685.
He received his education in Geneva and Berlin, where he attended lectures given by Johannes Peter Müller. Later on, he served as an assistant to François Jules Pictet de la Rive at the Geneva Academy, where in 1862 he became a professor of comparative anatomy. He was a regular contributor to the Archives des sciences physiques et naturelles.

His main research dealt with the structure of infusoria, the anatomy of annelids, the histology of earthworms, the embryology of arthropods and the evolution of spiders. Species with the epithet of claparedii commemorate his name, an example being the sea anemone Edwardsia claparedii.
Claparède stressed the importance of studying and illustrating living or recently killed organisms and he did not deposit any museum specimens. He died aged 39 from tuberculosis.