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 '''' in 1876. He became the director of the 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 ' published in two parts in 1867 and 1872, ' 1866–1874 and ' 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 '.

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'' , is named in honor of Milne-Edwards.

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