Adolphe Neyt

Adolphe Guillaume Neyt (born April 13, 1830 in Ghent , † September 21, 1892 in Ostend ) was a Belgian industrialist , liberal politician , photographer and arms collector.

Life

Neyt's father, Adolphe-Henri Neyt, was the manager of a sugar refinery in Ghent, chairman of the textile company Société Linière La Lys in Ghent and a railway company. He was also a liberal representative and chairman of the Ghent Commercial Court . From 1852 until his death in 1865 he was a member of the municipal council of Ghent, as well as temporarily both provincial member and member of parliament in Brussels .

around 1865: Macro photo of a flea (photographer: Adolphe Neyt)

Adolphe Guillaume Neyt inherited the sugar refinery that his grandfather Joachim Neyt had founded from his father and took over the liberal town council seat until 1869. He married the daughter of the inspector general of the Continental Gas Association , which operated a gas works as a branch in Ghent.

Neyt was very interested in the development of photography and acquired equipment for observations in the field of astronomy as well as microscopy for his photographic research . Most of Neyt's works, which are still known today, date from the 1860s. He was a member of both the Société française de photographie and the Association belge de photographie .

According to the catalog, Neyt exhibited microscopic and astronomical photographs at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 . Two years later he handed this work over to the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten in Brussels. His photographs of the moon could be seen at the world exhibition in Vienna in 1873 . The Museum of the History of Science at Ghent University shows how Neyt applied Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau's experiments to the photosensitive plates.

Neyt's collection of weapons and armor is on display at Gravensteen Castle in Ghent.