Alfred Grandidier was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

  and explorer.

From a very wealthy family, he and his brother, Ernest Grandidier

Ernest Grandidier

Ernest Grandidier was a French industrialist, naturalist and art collector.The Grandidier family was very wealthy and in 1857 Ernest Grandidier, with his brother Alfred and tutor Jules Janseen, went on a voyage to the Americas...

 (1833-1912), undertook a voyage around the world. At first they were led by the astronomer and physicist Pierre Jules César Janssen

Pierre Jules César Janssen

Pierre Jules César Janssen , usually known in French as Jules Janssen, was a French astronomer who, along with the English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer, is credited with discovering the gas helium....

 (1824-1907), but he fell sick and had to return to France at the end of six months.

They visited South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 in 1858 and 1859 and in particular the Andes

Andes

The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. During this voyage they gathered a significant collection of specimens which were analyzed, in 1860, by Ernest.

The two brothers parted ways after this. Ernest Grandidier went to China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and collected a vast number of specimens which are now in the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

 and the Guimet museum. Alfred travelled to India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, reaching it in 1863. He had intended to explore the high plateau of Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

, but was prevented by a severe attack of fever.

Grandidier travelled to Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

 to recuperate, remaining some time and making important collections and publishing an account of his findings. He then visited the island of Réunion

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

 and in 1865 made his first visit to Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

. He became devoted to the study of the island, revisiting in 1866 and 1868. He finally returned permanently to France in 1870. During his explorations he crossed the island three times, travelling 3000 kilometers in the interior and 2500 along the coast. He made observations which resulted in the production of a map of the island used in future expeditions.

After returning to France he began to work on his great work, L'Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar. This work was undertaken in cooperation with others such as Alphonse Milne-Edwards

Alphonse Milne-Edwards

Alphonse Milne-Edwards was a French mammalologist, ornithologist and carcinologist. He was English in origin, the son of Henri Milne-Edwards and grandson of Bryan Edwards, a Jamaican planter who settled at Bruges .Milne-Edwards obtained a medical degree in 1859 and became assistant to his father...

 and Leon Vaillant

Léon Vaillant

Léon Louis Vaillant was a French zoologist. He is most famous for his work in the areas of herpetology, malacology, and ichthyology...

. This work ran to 40 volumes, the final volumes published posthumously by his son Guillaume Grandidier

Guillaume Grandidier

Guillaume Grandidier was a French geographer , ethnologist , zoologist who studied the island of Madagascar.He was the son of the wealthy industrialist Alfred Grandidier also a zoologist and expert on Madagascar...

.

Alfred Grandidier's work drew the attention of the French government to Madagascar, which it would annex at the end of 1890.

He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1885 and was the president of the French Geographical Society

Société de Géographie

The Société de Géographie , is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 . Since 1878, its headquarters has been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gigantic caryatids representing Land and Sea...

from 1901 to 1905.