a French doctor and archaeologist, was a pioneer in the exploration of the monuments of Greece and a scholar of international reputation in the developing "Republic of Letters". Spon travelled to Italy, and then to Greece, to Constantinople and the Levant in 1675–1676 in the company of the English connoisseur and botanist Sir George Wheler (1650–1723), whose collection of antiquities was afterwards bequeathed to Oxford University. They were among the first knowledgeable Western European antiquaries to see the antiquities of Greece at first hand.
