Alphonse Milne-Edwards

Alphonse Milne-Edwards (Paris, 13 October 1835 – Paris, 21 April 1900) was a French mammalogist, ornithologist, and carcinologist. He was English in origin, the son of Henri Milne-Edwards and grandson of Bryan Edwards, a Jamaican planter who settled at Bruges (then in France).

Milne-Edwards obtained a medical degree in 1859 and became assistant to his father at the Jardin des Plantes in 1876. He became the director of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1891, devoting himself especially to fossil birds and deep-sea exploration. In 1881, he undertook a survey of the Gulf of Gascony with Léopold de Folin and worked aboard the Travailleur and the Talisman, researching the seas off the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Azores. For this, he received a gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

His major ornithological works include Recherches Anatomiques et Paléontologiques pour servir a l'Histoire des Oiseaux Fossiles de la France published in two parts in 1867 and 1872, Recherches sur la Faune ornithologique étiente des iles Mascareignes et de Madagascar 1866–1874 and Recherches pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des mammifères 1868–1874. His study of fossils led to the discovery of tropical birds such as trogons and parrots from prehistoric France. He worked with Alfred Grandidier on L'Histoire politique, physique et naturelle de Madagascar.

Milne-Edwards also described at least one plant taxon; a species of gutta-percha collected from the island of Grande Comore, Comoros, by ornithologist Léon Humblot, which Milne-Edwards named Isonandra gutta. (I. gutta is now considered to be a taxonomic synonym of Palaquium gutta (Hook.) Burck, and a homonym of its basionym Isonandra gutta Hook..)

In 1879, Milne-Edwards was the first to describe the giant isopod Bathynomus giganteus in the Scientific journal Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences.

A subspecies of Central American lizard, Holcosus festivus edwardsii Bocourt, 1873, is named in honor of Milne-Edwards.