Жан Гийом Брюгьер: врач, зоолог и дипломат XVIII века

French physician, zoologist and diplomat

Jean Guillaume Bruguière (19 July 1749 – 3 October 1798) was a French physician, zoologist and diplomat.

Bruguière was born in Montpellier, France, on 19 July 1749. He was a doctor, connected to the University of Montpellier. He was interested in invertebrates, mostly snails (gastropods). He accompanied the explorer Kerguelen Trémarec on his first voyage to the Antarctic in 1773. In 1790 he accompanied the entomologist Olivier on an expedition to Persia, but his poor health didn't allow him to continue. In 1792, although he was ill, he visited the Greek archipelago and the Middle East, together with the entomologist Guillaume Antoine Olivier. He was asked by the French Directoire to try to set up a Franco Persian alliance, but was unsuccessful, lacking the training of a diplomat. He died on the voyage back. He described several taxa in his book Tableau Encyclopédique et Méthodique des trois Règnes de la Nature: vers, coquilles, mollusques et polypes divers which appeared in three volumes in 1827, long after he had died. He also wrote Histoire Naturelle des Vers. Vol. 1 (1792) but he had to stop at the letter "C". Christian Hee Hwass continued his work and wrote most of it. He died in Ancona in October 1798 (and not in 1799, as mentioned in some sources; there was a discrepancy due to the French revolutionary calendar). He was mainly interested in molluscs and other invertebrates, as can be seen in the following list of the taxa he named.