Cyrano de BergeracSavinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (ˌsɪrənoʊ_də_ˈbɜːrʒəræk,_-_ˈbɛər- , savinjɛ̃ d(ə) siʁano d(ə) bɛʁʒəʁak; 6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist. A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the 17th century. Today, he is best known as the inspiration for Edmond Rostand's most noted drama, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), which, although it includes elements of his life, also contains invention and myth.
LamarckismLamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance. The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity.