Édouard Ménétries

Édouard Ménétries (Paris, France, 2 October 1802 – St. Petersburg, Imperial Russia, 10 April 1861) was a French entomologist, zoologist, and herpetologist. He is best known as the founder of the Russian Entomological Society.

Ménétries was born in Paris, and became a student of Georges Cuvier and Pierre André Latreille. On their recommendation he was chosen as the zoologist on a Russian expedition to Brazil in 1822, led by Baron von Langsdorff. On his return he was appointed curator of the Zoological Collection at St Petersburg. In 1829 he was sent by the Tsar on an exploratory trip to the Caucasus.

Ménétries was an authority on Lepidoptera and Coleoptera but also worked on other orders. Most of his named species are from Russia and Siberia but at the museum he was able to study insects from other parts of the world. Two such collections were those made during the expeditions of Alexander von Middendorf (1842–1845) and Leopold von Schrenck (1853–1857) to California and Alaska as well as Siberia. His collection is in the Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy.

In the field of herpetology he described several new species of reptiles and amphibians.