Jean-Baptiste Bécœur

Jean-Baptiste Bécœur (16 April 1718, Metz – 16 September 1777) was a French ornithologist.

Bécœur's parents were well-placed. His father, François Bécœur, was an apothecary, his mother, Anne Vaucremont, was the daughter of a doctor. He studied pharmacy first with his father and then in Germany, and finally in Paris where he attended the courses of Antoine de Jussieu. He then returned to Metz.

He was initially interested first in philosophy and mathematics but then devoted himself to natural history studying mainly insects and birds. At this time conservation techniques were mediocre. Bécoeur developed a method that preserved bird specimens and prevented them from being damaged by insect attack. He sent birds thus prepared to the Jardin du Roi, later to become the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, which earned him the praises of Georges-Louis Buffon and helped revolutionize the conservation of birds and ornithology at the museum. He tried several times, but without success, to become an assistant at the museum.

His method of conservation was based on arsenic but he died without publishing the recipe of the arsenical soap. It appeared again early in the nineteenth century in publications by Daudin and Dufresne, who were connected with the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Bécoeur's secret had been handed over to François Levaillant (1753–1828), who sold the recipe together with his collection of birds, animals and plants to the French government in 1797.[1] The arsenical soap remained in widespread usage until the 1950s.

Bécoeur was an associate of François Levaillant, who played a significant role in the establishment of French ornithology. The huge collection of Bécoeur was purchased by the Duke of Zweibrücken for the cabinet of curiosities of the Château de Karlsberg, destroyed after the Siege of Mainz in 1793.

References
  1. Rookmaaker, L.C.; Morris, P.A.; Glenn, I.E.; Mundy, P.J. (2008). "The ornithological cabinet of Jean-Baptiste Bécoeur and the secret of the arsenical soap". Archives of Natural History. 33 (1): 146–158. doi:10.3366/anh.2006.33.1.146.
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