His knowledge of natural history, surgery, medicine and agriculture made him a free correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences.
[1] In the 1740s, he fought for Maurice de Saxe in Bohemia and Flanders during the War of the Austrian Succession.
King Louis XV appointed him governor of Guyana but the colonizing expedition conducted in 1763 at the request of Étienne François de Choiseul, poorly prepared, was a resounding failure.
Similarly, because of power struggles, accused of embezzlement, Turgot ended up being the subject of a lettre de cachet.
A gout attack - disease shared with his father and brothers - won 21 October 1789.