Lameere, Auguste Alfred Lucien Gaston (1864-1942)

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Zoologist and entomologist, born in Ixelles (Elsene) on 12 June 1864 and died in Brussels on 6 May 1942.

Biography

Auguste Lameere was born in Ixelles (Elsene) on 12 June 1864. He studied Greek and Latin at the Atheneum of Brussels. At the age of 16, he was already a member of the Société royale belge d'entomologie. In 1934, he became honorary president of this society. He married Jeanne De Greef in 1901, with whom he had two children.

He enrolled in the physics course at the ULB where he obtained his doctorate in physics in 1887. He also became work leader of the practicals in the physics course.
In 1890, he was promoted to aggregate doctor at the University of Liège with his thesis on the cytology of the eggs of rotifers (a.k.a. wheel animals) and aphids by parthenogenesis ("virgin reproduction", a form of asexual reproduction). His promotor was Édouard Van Beneden.
In the same year, he was appointed lecturer in systematic zoology at the Faculty of Sciences of ULB. He was also assigned the biology course at the École des Sciences Sociales. He held the chair of Comparative Anatomy at ULB. In 1909 the course on the elements of zoology was added. He now taught all courses in zoology at the ULB. He also enriched the collection of specimens to illustrate the courses and to be used during the practicals.

He travelled with Jean Massart to Zarmatt (Switzerland), where they together studied the fauna and flora of the region. The study of the flora and fauna of the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East was the subject of a second trip to the Algerian Sahara by the same duo.

He also held a number of administrative posts at the ULB. He was the rector of the ULB from 1906 to 1908. He was also a member of the Administrative Council and a permanent member of the Bureau.

During the First World War, he stayed in France at the Roscoff laboratory, to which he had travelled before the outbreak of war. During this period he frequently visited the Paris Museum of Physics, where he studied the fossils collected by Brogniart.
In 1920, after the passing of Ernest Rousseau, he became the new director of the Overmere Station. At this station, research was done on protists, bryozoans(moss animals), freshwater polyps and other organisms in and around the Scheldt. The station was closed during the Second World War.
In 1926, he founded the Institut Zoologique Torley-Rousseau at ULB. This was made possible by a donation from Mrs Torley-Keller. He published his observations at this laboratory in the journal: Receuil de l'Institut zoologique Torley-Rousseau. He also introduced Précis de Zoologie.
In 1934, he was admitted to emeritus status.

In 1890 he became a member of the Royal Zoological Society of Belgium. He was president of this society from 1900 to 1902 and honorary president from 1934.
He became a corresponding member of the Académie royale des sciences des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 1902, an effective member in 1906 and a director in 1922.
He became a corresponding member of the Institut de France and the Institut Grand-Ducal de Luxembourg in 1918.
He won the Ten-yearly Prize of the Belgian Government for Zoological Sciences for the period 1912-1921. The prize rewarded his research performed in France during the First World War.
He was Grand Officer in the Order of Leopold and in the Order of the Crown. He was a Knight in the French Legion of Honour.
At the outbreak of the Second World War on May 10th 1940 he was in De Panne. He then returned to Brussels where he continued to teach for two years.
He passed away on 6 May 1942.

Work

Auguste Lameere was one of the most important advocates of Darwinism. Lameere mainly focused on phylogenesis, the search for a natural classification of species. He was well aware of Darwinian explanations and also of the newer (Mendelian) mutationism. Neo-lamarckism allowed him to pinpoint the causes of evolution to the conditions of life. His important publication in 1919 on Les variations et leur hérédité chez les Mollusques was entirely conceived in this neo-lamarckism.
During his education at the Atheneum (from 1881) he published three notes on the Belgian longhorn beetles.
During his studies at the university, he made several entomological observations and published them in the Annales de la Société royale entomologique de Belgique.
Between 1902 and 1912, the publication: Revision des Prionides appeared about a subspecies of longhorn beetle. An important publication was Manuel de la Faune de Belgique. In the publication he restricted himself to the indigenous species. The first volume appeared in 1895. In it he described vertebrates and spiders. In 1900 the second volume appeared on lower insects and in 1903 the third volume. The last volume dealt with the higher insects. He won the Edmond de Selys Longchamps Prize with this publication.
At the Royal Museum of Natural History, he worked on the series: Revision des Prionides and mentored young entomologists there.
He also carried out palaeontological research, the most important work being: Révision sommaire des Insectes fossiles du Stéphanien de Commentry.

History of science

He published a work on Darwin in 1923 in the series Les cent chef-d-oeuvre étrangers.

Didactic publications

He compiled the basis of the courses he taught into a work in 1892: Esquisse de zoologie. In 1911, he published the main conclusions of his research for his students in: Sommaire du Cours d'élements de Zoologie. This edition was completed by the publication of Guide pour les exercices pratiques de microscopie.
He also published all his courses that he taught all over Belgium and Luxembourg: Le Transformisme, Les Associations biologiques and Le Transformisme expérimental. All three had several reprints. In 1927 he published another didactic publication: Abrégé de la Classification zoologie and in 1931 a re-edition of this came out.
He published Précis de Zoologie, a work specifically intended for the students of zoology licenses.

Publications

• List with publications in: Lameere, William, Précis de Zoologie, vol. VII, 1942.
  

Bibliography

• Brien, Paul, "Lameere Auguste", in: Biographie Nationale, vol. 31, kol. 529-537.
• Brien, Paul, "Auguste Lameere", in Florilège des sciences en Belgique, 1968, p. 879-905.
• De Selys Longchamps, Marc, "Lameere Auguste", in: Annuaire ARB, jaargang 1954, p. 62-113.
• Poncelet, Marc, Nicolaï, Henri, Delhal, Jacques, Symoens, Jean-Jacques, "Les sciences d’outre-mer", in Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia, 2001, vol. 2, p. 264. (in Dutch).
• Vanpaemel, Geert, "La révolution darwinienne", in Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia/La Renaissance du livre, 2001, vol. 1 p. 267.