Noël-Antoine Pluche (13 November 1688 â 19 November 1761), known as the abbé Pluche, was a French priest. He is now known for his Spectacle de la nature, a most popular work of natural history.
Pluche, son of a baker, was born in Reims, in a street now named after him. He became a teacher of rhetoric. The Bishop of Laon made him head of the town's college, a post he accepted to escape judicial consequences of opposing the papal bull Unigenitus (1713)
He withdrew in 1749 to La Varenne-Saint-Maur, near Paris, where he died.
His Spectacle de la nature, ou Entretiens sur les particularités de l'Histoire naturelle qui ont paru les plus propres àrendre les jeunes gens curieux et àleur former l'esprit was published in nine volumes 1732âÂÂ1742, and widely translated all over Europe. Although it influenced many to become naturalists, it was a work of popularization, not of science.