Pierre Latreille was born on November 29, 1762 at Brive, in the province of Limousin, France. An illegitimate child of the baron d’Espargnac, he was abandoned by his mother at a church in Brive. His biological father eventually made financial arrangements for his son’s education, and he was educated at the Collège des Doctrinaires at Brive and the Collège du Cardinal Lemoine at Paris. He also was awarded a Master of Arts from the Paris University in 1780, entered a seminary and was made a Deacon in 1786. He likely was made a priest, though there is no record of this, and he was acting vicar at Lostanges in October 1789. At this time he became interested in entomology, living on the income that his father, the général baron d’Espargnac, had established for him. However, the French Revolution would cause him to be imprisoned, and sentenced to death or deportation. His interest in insects was recognized while he was in prison, and a sympathetic official terminated Latreille’s sentence. He remained in prison until 1794, however, and he gave up the priesthood and became a teacher. In 1796, encouraged by Fabricius, he published the “Précis des caractères génériques des insectes.” This innovative treatise created the concept of insect families. In 1798 he received an appointment at the Muséum, where he worked closely with Lamarck. In 1814 he was named a member of the Académie des Sciences, and he entered a very productive stage of his life, but he remained very poor. He often assisted others in their natural history publications, though he also published his own work. In Cuvier’s “Règne Animal” (1829) Latreille laid down the taxonomy of the entire Arthropoda. Eventually he replaced Lamarck as the dominant scientist of the institute. In 1830 he was awarded a new chair at the Muséum. Thus, he received recognition only late in life, despite a legacy of innovative contributions and decades of toil. Latreille is remembered primarily as a taxonomist, though he made important contributions in other areas. He introduced new methodologies and examined an enormous number of taxa. He believed in basing taxonomic groupings on the natural order: assembling species into genera, then into families, etc. Indeed, he was most interested in establishing genera, and named hundreds of new genera. Latreille also had profound impact on zoological nomenclature, emphasizing the principle of priority, insisting that families be named after an included genus, and emphasizing the concept of type species of a genus. Latreille was interested in morphology, and created several new terms. Interestingly, he considered field work most important, and was particularly interested in behavior. He sometimes incorporated behavioral characteristics into his taxonomic treatments. Though Latreille’s achievements were often overshadowed by better-known scientists of the era, he eventually became known as the foremost entomologist of his time, and has even been called the ‘prince of entomology.’ He died at Paris on February 6, 1833.