Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), zoologist and paleontologist, was born and educated in the French-speaking portion of Württemberg. In 1795 he moved to Paris, where his skills as a scholar and teacher facilitated his rapid rise within the scientific community. Cuvier was soon teaching zoology at the Écoles Centrales and animal anatomy at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, and he became a professor at the Collège de France in 1800, permanent secretary of the physical sciences at the Institut de France in 1803, a counsellor of state in 1814, and a baron in 1819. During his long career Cuvier took a special interest in the Muséum’s anatomical collections. With his assistance its holdings grew from a few hundred skeletons in the 1790s to thirteen thousand specimens at the time of his death. Although TJ owned several of Cuvier’s works, the two men apparently never met nor corresponded personally (DSB description begins Charles C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1970–80, 16 vols. description ends ; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends nos. 423, 999, 1020; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library, 1829 description ends , 5, 7 [nos. 174, 304]).