This question (asked on another thread—and answered by our estimable host) had also occurred to me:
But it seems that both pears originated in the same place and at around the same time, the nursery of André Leroy in Angers, France in the mid-nineteenth century; and that both are apparently named for the same man, Dr. André Desportes, who was Leroy’s longtime nursery manager (according to Morgan’s Book of Pears, from which I also derived my information regarding the “Docteur Desportes” pear’s origins in Angers, ca. 1854) and the son (and perhaps successor, if Morgan is correct) of another Leroy manager, Baptiste Desportes (according to Hedrick) . “André Desportes” (a seedling of “Williams’ Bon Chrétien”—aka “Bartlett”) was known in the U.S. in the nineteenth century, whereas “Docteur Desportes”—which, according to this French site, was first obtained by a horticulturalist and nurseryman named Treyve (possibly François-Marie Treyve or one of his sons) of Trévoux in 1893—was apparently not commercially available even in France until the end of the century. Hartman in Catalog and Evaluation of the Pear Collection at the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station (1957) suggests that the first commercial listing for “Docteur Desportes” was in the Leroy catalog of 1912. However, the contemporary Journal de la Société Nationale d’Horticulture de France notes that Treyve was offering grafts in 1893.
Whether all of this information is correct or not, I haven’t the time to ascertain. But I roughly pieced together these scraps of data in a spare moment—mainly because I find this sort of thing fascinating. Perhaps somebody with the interest—and better access to French sources—can shine more light on the origins of these two pears.
EDIT: If the good doctor truly was the namesake of both, he must’ve really been some fellow to have had two pears named in his honor, don’t you think? 