Paul Charles Édouard Bertrand (10 July 1879, Loos-lez-Lille – 24 February 1944,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a French

paleobotanist Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeogr ...

. He was the son of botanist Charles Eugène Bertrand (1851–1917). He studied at the

University of Lille The University of Lille (french: Université de Lille, abbreviated as ULille, UDL or univ-lille) is a French public research university based in Lille, Hauts-de-France. It has its origins in the University of Douai (1559), and resulted from the ...

, receiving his degree in

natural sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

in 1903 and his doctorate of sciences in 1909. In 1910 he became a lecturer in

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and director of the

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the N ...

"coal museum". In 1927 he attained the chair of paleobotany, a distinction created especially for Bertrand. From 1938 to 1944 (year of death), he served as chair of "''Anatomie comparée des végétaux actuels et fossiles''" at the

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

in Paris.Google Books
Historical perspective of early twentieth century Carboniferous paleobotanyParts of this biographical text are based on a translation of an article at the

French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia (french: Wikipédia en français) is the French-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has articl ...

; source listed as: "Philippe Jaussaud & Édouard R. Brygoo (2004). Du Jardin au Muséum en 516 biographies. Muséum national d’histoire naturelle de Paris : 630 p. ()". His work largely dealt with the comparative anatomy of fossil plants, comparative morphological investigations of living and fossil plants, and studies involving Carboniferous

biostratigraphy Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them.Hine, Robert. “Biostratigraphy.” ''Oxford Reference: Dictionary of B ...

. He made significant contributions in his research on the structure of early

fern A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes exce ...

s and fernlike plants. He is credited with defining the taxa ''Etapteris'' and ''Metaclepsydropsis''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bertrand, Paul 1879 births 1944 deaths 20th-century French botanists French paleontologists Lille University of Science and Technology alumni Paleobotanists People from Nord (French department)