Émile Maupas

François Émile Maupas (2 July 1842 in Vaudry – 18 October 1916 in Algiers) was a French librarian, protozoologist, cytologist, and botanist. Maupas contributed to ideas on the life cycle and reproduction of the ciliates. He founded the idea, known as the Maupasian life cycle, that some protists had a definite death following sexual reproduction, contrary to contemporary ideas on protists being immortal. He also identified the existence of mating types in ciliates. He developed culture techniques for a number of organisms and described the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which has since become a widely used model organism in biological studies.