Armand David, CM (7 September 1826, Espelette – 10 November 1900, Paris)[1] was a Lazarist missionary Catholic priest as well as a zoologist and a botanist from the French Basque Country.

Born in Espelette near Bayonne, in the north of Basque Country, in Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France, he entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1848, having already displayed great fondness for the natural sciences.

Ordained in 1851,[1] he was in 1862 sent to Peking, where he began a collection of material for a museum of natural history, mainly zoological, but in which botany, geology, and palaeontology were also well represented.

[3] In the midst of his work as a naturalist Father David did not neglect his missionary labours, and was noted for his careful devotion to his religious duties and for his obedience to every detail of his order's rules.

The fish Sarcocheilichthys davidi was named in his honor by Henri Émile Sauvage in 1878, because Père David collected the type specimen.