Auguste Boissonneau

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Auguste Boissonneau (26 July 1802, Saumur – 7 July 1883, Paris) was a French ornithologist and an eye prosthetics pioneer. He helped develop ocular prostheses and was a prolific scientist in his time.

As an ornithologist, he described many bird species from tropical and subtropical South America. The hummingbird genus Boissonneaua is named after him, and the species Pseudocolaptes boissonneautii (streaked tuftedcheek) was named in his honor by Lafresnaye in 1840.

In 1837 he published Catalogue d'oiseaux empaillés, offering bird skins for sale to the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Moscow. His customers included Côme-Damien Degland, Baron Frédéric de Lafresnaye, Jean Louis Cabanis for the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the Hof-Naturalienkabinett in Vienna, Coenraad Jacob Temminck for the Reichsmuseum für Naturgeschichte in Leiden, and many others. Private collectors such as George Loddiges and Benjamin Leadbeater also bought his skins, and Loddiges’ material later went to the Natural History Museum in London.