François-Désiré Roulin studied medicine in Paris, and published as his doctoral thesis "Propositions sur les mouvemens et les attitudes de l'homme", Paris 1820. In 1822 he travelled to Colombia with Francisco Antonio Zea and Bousssingault, practised medicine and painting there, and produced watercolours of which some were lost and some were published as aquatints (by P. Legrand) in G. Mollien, Voyage dans la République de Colombia en 1823 (Paris 1824): sixteen of the surviving ones are in the art collection of the Banco de la República en Colombia: https://colecciones.banrepcultural.org/simple-recherche?pageId=6357aa7ae27d753f221c618d&q=Roulin
Roulin returned to France in 1828, travelled in Greece, wrote on a variety of subjects, became Librarian of the Institut de France and became a member of the Académie des Sciences. He died on 5 June 1874. See further Margarita Combes, Pauvre et aventureuse bourgeoisie: Roulin et ses amis, 1796-1874, Paris 1929 (Spanish transl. Roulin y sus amigos, in Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, Bogotá 1942), and G. Giraldo Jaramillo, "El perfil de Roulin", in his Notas y documentos sobre el arte en Colombia, Bogotá 1955, pp. 153-159
