Louis Figuier (1819-1894) was a French scientist and writer. He became Doctor of Medicine (1841), agr矇g矇 of pharmacology, chemistry (1844-1853) and physics and gained his PhD in (1850). He edited and published a yearbook from 1857 to 1894 in which he compiled an inventory of the scientific discoveries of the year (it was continued after his death until 1914). He was the author of numerous successful works: Les Grandes inventions anciennes et modernes (1861), Le Savant du foyer (1862), La Terre avant le d矇luge (1863) illustrated by ?douard Riou, La Terre et les mers (1864), Les Merveilles de la science (1867-1891). Influenced by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863, the 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le d矇luge abandoned the Garden of Eden shown in the first edition, and included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes. He died in 1894 at the age of 74 or 75.