Biography
Henri Milne-Edwards was the 27th child of William Edwards, an English planter and militia colonel in Jamaica and Elisabeth Vaux, a Frenchwoman. He was born in Bruges, in present-day Belgium, where his parents had retired; at that time, Bruges was a part of the newborn French Republic. His father was jailed for several years for helping some Englishmen in their escape to their country. Henri spent most of his life in France. He was brought up in Paris by his older brother Guillaume Frederic Edwards (1777–1842), a distinguished physiologist and ethnologist. His father was released after the fall of Napoleon. The whole family then moved to Paris.
At first he turned his attention to medicine, in which he graduated as an MD at Paris in 1823. His passion for natural history soon prevailed, and he gave himself up to the study of the lower forms of animal life. He became a student of Georges Cuvier and befriended Jean Victoire Audouin.
He married Laura Trézel. They had nine children, including the biologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards.
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