Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon

(1707 - 1788)

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon, presented his paper on geometric probability, “Memoir on the Game of Franc-carreau,” to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1733, became the keeper of the royal botanical garden in 1739, and in 1749 began publishing his Natural History, the first modern attempt to synthesize all that was known about natural history, geology, and anthropology in one work. At his estate in Montbard, Buffon kept a menagerie and an aviary.