Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707 – 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, and cosmologist. Buffon's works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death.