The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change

Shortly after Charles Darwin published his magnum opus, The Origin of Species, in 1859 he started reading a little-known 100-year-old work by a wealthy French aristocrat.

Its contents were quite a surprise. “Whole pages [of his book] are laughably like mine,” Darwin wrote to a friend. “It is surprising how candid it makes one to see one’s view in another man’s words.”

In later editions of The Origin of Species, Darwin acknowledged Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, as one of the “few” people who had understood that species change and evolve, before Darwin himself.

Now a new book will attempt to shine a light on the French naturalist’s extraordinary achievements and groundbreaking ideas, which date back to the 1740s. “Buffon was one of the very first people to postulate the change of species over time,” said Jason Roberts, author of a new book, Every Living Thing, which will be published next week, on 11 April. “He did not call it evolution – that word was coined later – but he was one of the first people to talk about it and suggest there was some kind of system.”

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