René Lesson

He served on Duperrey's round-the-world voyage of La Coquille (1822–1825), of which he collected natural history specimens with his fellow surgeon Prosper Garnot and officer Dumont d'Urville.

[4][better source needed] Lesson also published several monographs on hummingbirds and one book on birds of paradise: In the field of herpetology he described many new species of amphibians[5] and reptiles.

de la mer du Sud … c'est là qu'on trouve premierement le système arithmétique fondé sur un échelle de vingt, comme dans la Nouvelle-Zélande (2)..." […east of the South Sea … is where we first find the arithmetic system based on a scale of twenty, as in New Zealand (2)...].

The mention of "the English" likely referred to Samuel Lee and Thomas Kendall, as their 1820 grammar of the New Zealand language had been von Chamisso's source.

[14][15] Regardless of whether his 1825 use of "undécimal" originated as a printer's error or not, over the next several years, Lesson and his friend and shipmate Jules de Blosseville would deliberately embellish and attempt to establish as fact the idea that New Zealand had a base 11 number system.

[14] The idea was published in 1826 by the Italian geographer Adriano Balbi as the contents of a letter he received from Lesson, a missive that added an elevens-based numerical vocabulary (including terms meaning eleven squared and cubed) and details of its purported collection from New Zealand informants.

[17]: 121  Lesson was also likely to have authored an undated, anonymous essay found among and published with the papers of the Prussian linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1839.