Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (September 7, 1707 - April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author. 100 years before Darwin, Buffon published his Historie Naturelle, a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world; he wrestled with the similarities of humans and apes and even talked about common ancestry of Man and apes, but ultimately rejected the idea of a common descent. He died in 1788 at the age of 80.

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Georges Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French Polymath

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