Marie-Théophile Griffon du Bellay

Born in 1829, he trained as a physician and served as a naval surgeon in the French Navy. His career took him to Gabon, where he combined medical work with close observation of the region's plants, languages, and healing traditions.

He became known for collecting and describing useful and medicinal plants from Central Africa, including early scientific reports connected with iboga and other species used in local practice. He also wrote about tropical illnesses and was part of the broader nineteenth-century effort to document the natural history of West and Central Africa.

After returning to France, he continued to publish and to build his reputation as both a doctor and a naturalist. Remembered today for linking field exploration with medicine and botany, he died in 1908 after a career that left a lasting mark on the study of Gabon and its plant knowledge.