John James Audubon

Also known as John James Laforest Audubon, John James. Audubon, John James Audobon, Jean-Jacques Fougère, Jean-Jacques Audubon, Audubon, Jean-Jacques Fougere, john j. audubon

French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter (1785–1851)

OverviewAI-generated

John James Audubon (1785–1851) was an American and French ornithologist, zoologist, botanist, and painter. Born in Les Cayes and deceased in New York City, he is recognized for his notable work, *The Birds of America*. His field of work was ornithology, and he was a student of Alexander Wilson. Audubon spoke English and French.

He was a member of the Royal Society, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His works are held in collections at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Archives of his materials are located at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Synthesized by Vinony from 40 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Europeana Sparql, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1785
Died: 1851
Works: 170

Top works

The viviparous quadrupeds of North America
The birds of America
Permit made out in favour of John James Audubon
Bird Life Stories, Book 1
The world of John James Audubon

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United States
Active from: 1785
Active to: 1851

americanaméricainfrancefrancophonefrançaisfrench

Discogs

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 47
Total plays: 478

via Last.fm · John James Audubon

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
· 1996 · cited 204,552x
The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews
· 2021 · cited 85,040x
Special points for Brillouin-zone integrations
· 1976 · cited 68,291x
Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis
· 2012 · cited 66,856x
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 43,600x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and beautiful horses, visited all such neighbors as I found congenial spirits, and was as happy as happy could be.”
“I cannot write at all, but if I could how could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? I will not write at all.”
“Captain Hall expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes. I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.”
“Thank God it has rained all day. I say thank God, though rain is no rarity, because it is the duty of every man to be thankful for whatever happens by the will of the Omnipotent Creator; yet it was not so agreeable to any of my party as a fine day would have been.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Works in European collections

5 objects attributed to John James Audubon, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

Untitled

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin, April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American artist, entrepreneur, naturalist, explorer, and ornithologist. His combined interests in painting and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies of American birds and for his detailed (yet romantic) illustrations, which were engraved in Scotland and England for a large-format (double-elephant folio) color-plate (intaglio) book titled The Birds of America (1827–1838), and five volumes of accompanying text entitled Ornithological Biography (1831–1839).

Audubon's scientific contributions were considerable but controversial. He was accused of fraud, plagiarism, and scientific misconduct during his life as well as posthumously. As of 2025, the IOC World Bird List (v.15.1) attributes him as the primary author of 23 bird species (14 of which were based on specimens he purchased or received from colleagues) and 13 subspecies. This tally is an overestimate because it includes at least one ambiguous species (Traill's flycatcher, Muscicapa traillii) that was recently stabilized (as willow flycatcher) with a neotype, and one subspecies (northern bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus washingtoniensis) that was based on a plagiarized image and fabricated data. Another of Audubon's new subspecies (northern Harris's hawk, Parabuteo unicinctus harrisi) was based on a stolen specimen.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “John James Audubon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

John James Audubon