Jean-Baptiste Lamark

Jean-Baptiste P. A. de Monet, Chevalier de Lamark was born at Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardy, on 1st August, 1744. He was the youngest of eleven children.

His father, Phillipe, expected Jean to take a career in the church. However, Jean was not inclined to the ministry, and when his father died in 1760 Lamarck quit his Jesuit college, bought himself a horse, and rode away to join the French army in their campaign near Fissinghausen, Germany. A spell in an office gave him the means to read botanical works and, with his brother, eventually to study medicine. He began to study botany at age 34.

 Lamark worked on the theory that species passed on characteristics developed in their lifetime, as they continually tried to improve themselves, to future generations. This was the first alternative to creationism.

Like Darwin, he wrongly believed that characteristics acquired in an individual organism's lifetime are passed on to its offspring. This was proposed using a theory about giraffes i.e.: giraffes stretched their necks to reach food, and their offspring inherited stretched necks. This was central to Lamark's theory, but played only a small  part in Darwin's ideas about natural selection.

He died in 1829.