Charles Athanase Walckenaer

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Charles Walckenaer

Charles Athanase Walckenaer (born December 25, 1771 in Paris , † April 28, 1852 there ) was a French civil servant and scientist. As a zoologist, he was interested in arthropods , more precisely in arachnids . He was also interested in philosophy , geography , history and art. As an author and writer, he left a work of encyclopedic value.

Life

Walckenaer was born in Paris in 1771 as the illegitimate son of the royal notary and art patron Charles-Nicolas Duclos du Fresnoy and Anne Pajot de Villepenot, Marquise d'Asfeld. His studies first took him to the universities of Oxford and Glasgow . During the Revolutionary Wars he served as an officer and from 1793 as the Army General Inspector for military transport in the Pyrenees , which he knew how to use for his scientific study trips. When English devices were found in his luggage and because of his noble descent, he was accused of being an English spy. As a "moderate" he hid from the Terreur in the Paris Marais district and survived. Until 1794 he attended technical courses at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the newly founded École polytechnique in Paris. After the end of Terreur, however, he returned to the sciences as a privateer . In 1813 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . In 1814, during the Restoration , he became mayor of the 5th arrondissement of Paris and pursued a political career. In 1823 he was made a baron . He was Secretary General of the Prefecture of the Seine from 1816 to 1825, as well as Prefect of the Nièvre Department in 1826 and of the Aisne Department in 1828 . His dismissal in 1830 put an end to his political ambitions, so that he then returned to the sciences.

In 1832, Walckenaer discovered and purchased a map of America that had been made in 1500 by the Spanish navigator, cartographer and explorer Juan de la Cosa , a travel companion of Christopher Columbus . It later turned out to be the oldest existing map of America. Walckenaer immediately reported his find to Alexander von Humboldt , who wrote a paper about it. After Walckenaer's death, the card was bought by the Spanish government at the instigation of Ramón de la Sagras . According to other statements, Alexander von Humboldt found this map in the spring of 1832 in the Paris library of Walckenaer.

In 1839 Walckenaer became curator of the department for maps at the Royal Library in Paris and from 1840 secretary for life of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . In 1832 he was a co-founder of the Société entomologique de France , of which he was president twice in 1835 and 1841.

Walckenaer married Joséphine Marcotte de Pyn on May 25, 1794. They had three children. Walckenaer's grave is in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

Taxa named after Walckenaer

Its name also found worldwide distribution through the almost ubiquitous, species-rich and common genus Walckenaeria of dwarf and canopy spiders .

Works

  • Essai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine. Paris: DuPont, 1798
  • La monde maritime (4 volumes, 1818)
  • Recherches geographiques sur l'intérieur de l'Afrique septentrionale. Bertrand, Paris 1821 digitized
  • Histoire générale des voyages (21 volumes, 1826–1831)
  • Géographie ancienne, historique et comparée des Gaules (3 volumes, 1839, new edition 1862)
  • Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de la Fontaine (1820 and 1840)
  • Histoire de la vie et des poésies d'Horace
  • Memoires touchant la vie et les écrits de Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
  • with P. Gervais: Histoire naturelle des insectes (4 volumes, 1836–1847)
  • Collection des relations de voyages par mer et par terre: en differentes parties de l'Afrique depuis 1400 jusqu'à nos jours Vol. 6. Paris, 1842.

In 1845 he published the original work of La Bruyère.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne Godlewska: Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt . University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1999, ISBN 0-226-30046-3 , pp. 273 ( google.de ).
  2. ↑ WALCKENAER Charles Athanase, baron de. In: cths.fr. Retrieved October 26, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Sandra Rebok: Alexander von Humboldt and Spain in the 19th century. Analysis of a mutual perception process . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 140 ( google.de ).
  4. ↑ 1831-1840 - Alexander von Humboldt Research. In: avh.bbaw.de. Retrieved October 26, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Charles Athanase WALCKENAER - "pierfit" - Geneanet. In: gw.geneanet.org. Retrieved October 26, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Walckenaer, Charles Athanase
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French civil servant and scientist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1852
Place of death Paris