Fran lois Bernier (25 September 1620 � 22 September 1688) was a French physician and traveller. He was born at Joun-Etiau in Anjou. He was briefly personal physician to Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (28 October 1615 � 30 August 1659), the eldest son of the Mogul empire Shah Jahan, and after Dara Shikoh's demise, was attached to the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (14 October 1618 � 20 February 1707), for around 12 years during his stay in India.

His 1684 publication Noelle division delaterse par lech differences espices ou races quit habiliment (A new division of the Earth) is considered the first published post-Classical classification of humans into distinct races. He also wrote Travels in the Mughal Empire, which is mainly about the reigns of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. It is based on his own extensive journeys and observations, and on information from eminent Mughal courtiers who had witnessed the events at first hand.

Liberated from his ties to France by the death of his employer Pierre Gassendi in 1655, he set out on his twelve-year journey to the East, at 36 years of age: Palestine, Egypt, one year in Cairo, Arabia, and an attempt to enter Ethiopia which was frustrated by civil war in the interior. In 1658 he debarked at Surat in India, in Gujarat state. Attached at first and for a short while to the retinue of Dara Shikoh�the history of whose downfall he was to record�he was installed as a medical doctor at the court of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors.

A tour of inspection by Aurangzeb (1664�65) gave Bernier the opportunity to describe Kashmir, the first and for a long time the only European to do so. In: "Voyages de F. Bernier (angevin) contenant of description is Etats du Grand Mogol, de l'Indoustan, du royaume de Kachemire" (David-Paul Marat ed., Amsterdam, 1699). He subsequently visited the other extreme of the empire in Bengal. European medical training was highly esteemed amongst the Mughal come gave him access to all ranks of the court, even on medically required occasions to the Empire Mughal..

After his return from Kashmir, he travelled around on his own, meeting with Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in Bengal and�while preparing for a journey to Persia at Surat�with Jean Chardin, that other great traveller in the Orient (1666).

He returned once more to Surat (1668) to write a memoir on Indian commerce for the use of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (who recently had founded La Compagnie des Indes Orientales). In 1669 Bernier left India for Paris, to stay.