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Re: 152nd anniversary of G. A. Mantell's death and the short list of most important persons in the history of discovering fossils

<<Georg August Goldfuss  18 April 1782 - 2 October 1848>>

<Probably Goldfuß, but I don't know.>

Probably both.

Impossible. A proper name from the 19th century can't have more than one spelling in that corner of the world.

<<Adolph D'Archiac  24 September 1802 - 24 December 1868>>

<If he's French, then he's Adolphe, and d'Archiac.>

 Amen to the little d, but, this is his full name, from French sources:
"Etienne Jules Adolph Desmier, vicomte d'Archiac," in which "vicomte
d'Archiac" is NOT part of his name, only "Etienne Jules
Adolph Desmier" is.

By that rule Buffon, Lamarck and arguably Nopcsa don't count either. -- Are you sure about the lack of that final e?

<Agassiz.>

Jean Luis Rodolphe Agassíz.... 

Not Spanish, French: Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz [ah-gahss-SI].

<<Eugenii A. Maleev  1915 - 1966>>

<Not u, v. (We could waffle endlessly about the rest of the spelling, but
this is definite.)>

 Eh ... so is using the proper spelling for all of it: Yevgeny
Aleksandrovich Maleyev.

You call that "proper spelling"? ... Mmmm ... OK, it's half past 11 pm, I'm too tired to nitpick for half an hour or 5 to 10 kilobytes on other possible transcriptions. :-)

In Russian, "ye" is usually soft

How do you mean? (In German, b, d, and g are called "soft" while p, t and k are called "hard"... that's obviously not what you mean here.)

(and approximates "e") unless 1) at beginning of a word,
2) at end of a word, or 3) following another vowel.

I'd say this is misleading. If it follows a consonant (no matter if it forms the end of the word or not), then the "y" part drops, and instead the consonant is modified (for linguists: I think I'm talking about palatalization... :-} ). Otherwise the "y" part is pronounced as such.

For instance, Evolutsii does not use the
"E" character, but the rounded "backwards" "E."

Yep.