René Primevère Lesson (20 March 1794 - 28 April 1849) was a French surgeon, naturalist, ornithologist, and herpetologist.
Lesson was born at Rochefort, and at the age of sixteen he entered the Naval Medical School there. He served in the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars; in 1811 he was third surgeon on the frigate Saal, and in 1813 second surgeon on the Regulus.
In 1816 Lesson changed his classification to pharmacist and served as pharmacist and botanist on Duperrey's round-the-world voyage of La Coquille (1822–1825), and was also responsible for collecting natural history specimens with his fellow surgeon Prosper Garnot and officer Dumont d'Urville. Lesson was the first naturalist to see live birds of paradise in the Moluccas and New Guinea.
On returning to Paris, he spent seven years preparing the vertebrate zoological section of the official account of the expedition, Voyage au tour du monde sur La Coquille (1826–39). During this time he also produced Manuel d'Ornithologie (1828), Traité d'Ornithologie (1831), Centurie Zoologique (1830–32) and Illustrations de Zoologie (1832–35). He also produced several monographs on hummingbirds and one book on birds of paradise.
In the field of herpetology he described many new species of amphibians[1] and reptiles.[2]
In 1832 he became Deputy Chief Pharmacist and later (1839) Chief Pharmacist for the Navy at Rochefort. He received the Légion d'honneur in 1847.
His experience as a ship's surgeon resulted in his two-volume Manuel d'Histoire Naturelle Médicale et de Pharmacologie (1833), intended as a handbook for all naval surgeons.
René Primevère Lesson is sometimes confused with his brother Pierre-Adolphe who was also a doctor and sailed with d'Urville in 1826.