Pierre Denys de Montfort, also sometimes spelled "Pierre Dénys de Montfort", (1766–1820) 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...

, in particular a malacologist, remembered today for his pioneering inquiries into the existence of the giant squid

Giant squid

The giant squid is a deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae, represented by as many as eight species...

 Architeuthis, which was thought to be an old wives' tale, and for which he was long dismissed. He was inspired by a description from 1783 of an eight-metre long tentacle found in the mouth of a sperm whale

Sperm Whale

The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, is a marine mammal species, order Cetacea, a toothed whale having the largest brain of any animal. The name comes from the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in the animal's head. The sperm whale is the only living member of genus Physeter...

.

Montfort was author of Conchyliologie systématique, et classification méthodique de coquilles (2 vols., Paris 1808–1810) and of Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques (2 vols., Paris 1801–1802) published as an addendum to the comte de Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...

's Histoire naturelle générale et particulière.

He appears also to have been the author of Petit vocabulaire à l'usage des Français et des Alliés, renfermant les noms d'une partie des choses les plus essentielles à la vie en plusieurs langues: français, Latin, hébreu, hollandais, allemand, anglais, espagnol, italien, etc par M. Denys de Montfort, which appeared in 1815, as Paris filled with the polyglot armies of the Allies, after the fall of Napoleon in 1814.

Montfort later dared more sensational claims. He proposed that ten British warships that had mysteriously disappeared one night in 1782 must have been attacked and sunk by giant octopuses. Unfortunately for Montfort, the British knew what had happened to the ships, resulting in a disgraceful revelation for Montfort. His career never recovered and he died starving and poor in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 around 1820. Many of his sources for the "kraken octopus" probably described the very real giant squid, Architeuthis, proven to exist in 1857.

Taxa

Montfort named some taxa of gastropods including:

• Lanistes
  Lanistes
  Lanistes is a genus of freshwater snails which have a gill and an operculum, aquatic gastropod mollusks in the family Ampullariidae, the apple snails.- Distribution :The distribution of the genus Lanistes includes Africa and Madagascar....
  
  Montfort, 1810 - a genus of freshwater apple snails