Leo Lesquereux

Charles Léo Lesquereux (November 18, 1806 – October 25, 1889) was a Swiss-born bryologist and a pioneer of American paleobotany who studied the formation of peat bogs.

He attempted to obtained treatment from a noted French otologist Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard but was treated disrespectfully and given painful injections of fluid although he was fortunate not to receive some of Itard's other experimental treatments that included like electric shocks, puncturing the eardrum or fracturing the skull with a hammer supposedly to drain fluids.

After recovering, he met made many excursions in order to collect mosses in the Jura Mountains, eventually leading to investigations of peat bogs.

[1] His pioneer research and analysis on the origin, composition and development of peat resulted in a close friendship with famed scientist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873).

In 1848 Lesquereux followed Agassiz to the United States, subsequently residing in Columbus, Ohio, where he performed bryological research with William Starling Sullivant (1803–1873).