Biology in the University: the success of marine biology leads but to paradigm lost.

Incorruptible Mer, et qui nous juge! … Ah! nous avions trop présumé de I'homme sous le masque! Qui done es-tu, Maître nouveau? Vers quoi tendu, où je n'ai part? et sur quel bord de l'âme te dressant, comme prince barbare sur son amas de sellerie; ou comme cet autre, chez les femmes, flairant l'acidité des armes? At about mid-century, research and teaching in natural history and physiology in both the Muséum and the Collège de France were much stronger than in the faculties of science. In 1855–6 it was possible to classify the faculties into three categories according to the level of their teaching of natural history. In the first group, with a full faculty, including three professors in natural history, one for each “order” of the natural world, were Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, and Toulouse. The second group, with two professors of natural history, one of whom taught two different courses, included Caen, Dijon, Strasbourg, Besançon, Grenoble, Rennes, and Bordeaux. The third group, made up of new faculties having only one professor for all of natural history, included Lille, Nancy, Marseille, Clermont, and Poitiers. But less than a quarter century later the faculties had improved considerably in the whole range of biological science; in the last decades of the nineteenth century a great deal of new biological research was done in the faculties. In areas like marine biology, the faculties were the most productive institutions in research and in training researchers and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]