Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (1790–1842) - was born on 23 May 1790 at Condé-sur-Noireau, a village in Normandy, France. His father was Gabriel François Dumont, sieur of Urville and an hereditary Judge; his mother, née Jeanne de Croisilles, was of a noble French family.
The d'Urvilles, because of their aristocratic connections, took refuge after the French Revolution in a secluded part of Normandy. Here, after the death of his father, Jules was educated by his mother's brother, a churchman of wide learning. Later he attended the Lycée Malherbe at Caen. In 1807 he entered the Navy. A student by talent and inclination, he devoted himself to learning, both in the humanities and natural sciences. In 1815 he married. In 1820, while on a visit in a French naval vessel to the eastern Mediterranean, he was instrumental in procuring for France a Greek statue which had been found on Melos – the Venus de Milo.

In 1822–25, while serving on the Coquille, he surveyed the Falklands, Tahiti and other Pacific islands, and New Holland (W Australia). In 1826–29 he commanded the Astrolabe in a voyage around the world; searching for the ill-fated La Pérouse expedition, he explored Fiji and many other islands of Oceania, the New Zealand coast, and the Moluccas. With the Astrolabe and the Zelée he made a second circumnavigation in 1837–40, and in 1840 he penetrated the ice pack south of New Zealand and discovered the Adélie Coast region in Antarctica. (Ref: M&B; Tooley)