René Léon Bourret

René Léon Bourret (28 January 1884, Nérac, (Lot-et-Garonne) – 28 July 1957) was a French herpetologist and geologist.

In 1900, he arrived in French Indochina as a member of the military. Beginning in 1907, he worked as a surveyor for the "cadastral survey". From 1919 to 1925, he performed geological surveys in Indochina, becoming a professor in 1925 at the École Supérieure des Sciences, Université Indochinoise in Hanoi. Two years later, he released his first zoological publication, a general review on vertebrates native to Indochina.

During the ensuing years, he published three major works on herpetofauna native to Indochina - monographs on snakes (1936), chelonians (1941), and amphibians (1942). During the Japanese occupation of Indochina, he remained in Hanoi, where he continued regular publications. In 1947, he returned to France and settled in Toulouse. Most of his specimens are preserved in museums in Toulouse and Paris.

These herpetological species/subspecies are named after him:

• Bourret's blind skink, Dibamus bourreti
• Bourret's box turtle, Cuora bourreti
• Bourret's cat snake, Boiga bourreti
• Bourret's emo skink, Emoia laobaoense
• Bourret's odd-scaled snake, Achalinus ater
• Bourret's pit viper, Protobothrops jerdonii bourreti.[1]