Jean Baptiste Boisduval

Who was Jean Baptiste Boisduval?

Jean Baptiste Alphonse Dechauffour de Boisduval was a French lepidopterist and physician. He developed the Boisduval scale and identified many new species of butterflies. One of the most celebrated lepidopterists of France, he was the co-founder of the Société Entomologique de France. Early in his career, he was interested in Coleoptera and allied himself with both Lacordaire and Latreille. He was the curator of the Pierre Françoise Marie Auguste Dejean collection in Paris and described many species of beetles, as well as butterflies and moths, resulting from the voyages of the Astrolabe, the expedition ship of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse and the "Coquille", that of Louis Isidore Duperrey. Boisduval's Elateridae are in the Natural History Museum, London and the types of Curculionidae in Brussels Natural History Museum. His Lepidoptera were sold to Charles Oberthür. The Sphingidae are in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.