The biology collections
The biology collections kept at Sorbonne University and featured on SorbonNum come from different libraries established for teaching and research, and are sometimes inherited from particular laboratories and researchers. We can therefore list the libraries of laboratories specialising in zoology and the evolution of living organisms, those of the marine stations specialising in marine biology, and Alfred Giard and Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers’s libraries.
Personal library of Alfred Giard
The Sorbonne University Library contains the professional library of the zoologist Alfred Giard who helped impose the idea of the evolution of species in France. The collection provides an account on his research, conducted within the Lille and Paris science faculties, and in his Wimereux laboratory.
More about personal library of Alfred Giard
Personal library of Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers
The BSU holds, in the Library of the Oceanological Observatory of Banyuls, the personal library of Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers (books, periodicals, collections of theses and offprints, manuscripts, etc.), which has resided there since the creation of the Arago Laboratory. The collection contains more than 500 works. It includes rare books by eminent French and foreign scientists from the 17th to the 19th century, with exceptional iconography.
More about personal library of Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers
Wimereux station (Coming soon on SorbonNum)
The Wimereux zoological station was founded in 1874 by Alfred Giard, then a substitute lecturer of natural history in the Lille science faculty. Wimereux, situated on the Opal Coast, was easily accessible by train. The Lille students would come to learn about marine biology and collect and study living specimens. In 1888, Alfred Giard was appointed chair of evolution of living organisms newly created at the Sorbonne. Since then, the Wimereux station was associated with the Paris science faculty until it was destroyed during the Second World War. The BCPR Library contains a part of the library of the disappeared station. The Travaux de la station zoologique Wimereux demonstrate the research carried out in this laboratory and the environmental history of this locality which has contained several aboratories and marine stations, some of which are still active today.
Access to the “Wimereux station” collection (link coming soon)
