Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744 – 1829) was a French naturalist and an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws. Lamarck is however remembered today mainly in connection with a discredited theory of heredity, the inheritance of acquired traits (“Lamarckism”) He was also one of the first to use the term “biology” in its modern sense.