Hippolyte Sebert

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Hippolyte Sebert photographed by Pierre Petit

Hippolyte Sebert (born January 30, 1839 in Verberie , † January 23, 1930 in Paris ) was a French engineer and officer in the French army .

Life

military service

His first phase of life was determined by his military career. After school education in the northern French city of Douai , he entered the elite university École polytechnique in Paris in 1858 , which he left in 1860 as an artillery officer in the Navy; he was then stationed in Toulon . He developed devices for measuring deformation in the manufacture of gun barrels.

From 1866 to 1870 he was stationed in New Caledonia , where he was in charge of the naval artillery. He began to be interested in the mechanical properties of tropical timber and inventoried in various parts of newly discovered plant species, at the first description he was involved to some extent. Its botanical author abbreviation is " Sebert ".

During the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War , he took part in the Battle of Villiers with the 2nd Army as personal adjutant ( aide-de-camp) to General Charles Victor Frébault . In 1890 he was promoted to the Général de brigade . In 1891 he was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor .

As head of the central laboratory of the naval artillery, Sebert carried out ballistic experiments and tested the mechanics of cannons. With his friend Pierre-Henri Hugoniot , he also analyzed the exhaust gases that are produced when a gun is fired.

After the service

After retiring from the military, he resumed his scientific career. He first became a consulting engineer, then managing director of the shipbuilding company Société des forges et chantiers de la Méditerranée . In 1897 Sebert was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences , Mechanics Section. In 1898 he initiated the Bureau Bibliographique de Paris in cooperation with the Institut International de Bibliographie (now Mundaneum ) founded in Belgium in 1895 by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine .

In 1900 Sebert was President of the Association française pour l'avancement des sciences . In 1916/17 he was one of the co-founders of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée , which later became the Grande école École supérieure d'optique (SupOptique for short). From 1901 to 1929 he was the successor of Louis Lumière and chairman of the French Society for Photography and Chairman of the French Society for Cinematography (Société française de cinématographie).

Dreyfus affair

In 1904 Sebert was chairman of a commission consisting of four generals, which had the order to investigate the so-called Bordereau . It was a document from which it emerged that an unknown French general staff officer had leaked confidential information to the German secret service. “Embarrassed France” saw this high treason as one of the main causes of the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71). The artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus of Jewish origin was legally condemned for treason and demoted . The “General Sebert Commission” contributed to its late rehabilitation, but it stated succinctly that the bordereau could not have been drawn up by an officer of the artillery.

Esperanto

Sebert was committed to the decimal classification in the bibliography. The library of the French Esperanto association Union Française pour l'Espéranto (UFE) bears the name Hippolyte Sebert and uses the decimal classification introduced by Sebert.

In search of a universal language for the bibliography, Sebert came across the artificial language Esperanto in 1898 , an advocate of which he remained until the end of his life. Together with Émile Javal , he founded the Centra Oficejo in Paris in 1905 with the task of promoting Esperanto through advertising and education. For this purpose, he made two rooms available in the Société française de photographie, which he directed, and financed the facility with substantial donations. Sebert participated in most of the Esperanto world congresses . He motivated numerous scientists to learn Esperanto and to use it in scientific communication. In 1906 he founded the Internacia Scienca Asocio Esperantista (International Scientific Association) as an umbrella organization and was its chairman for two years.

Memberships

In 1897 he was accepted as a full member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Works

science and technology
  • Notice sur les instruments enregistreurs, construits par Richard Frères . Richard, 1886. 84 pp.
About Esperanto or in Esperanto
  • 1990: Leteroj de Sebert al Ludoviko [Zamenhof] (Ed. Ito Kanzi)
  • 1920: Le mouvement espérantiste avant la guerre et depuis 1914
  • 1910: La langue internationale auxiliaire Esperanto. Général Sebert. Office Central Espérantiste, 1910.
  • 1910: Modela klasifiko de Esperantaj bibliotekoj laŭ la sistemo de la decimala klasifiko uzata por la universala bibliografia repertorio (recenzo en La Revuo 6a vol. 1911–1912, p. [146])
  • 1909: L'Esperanto et les langues nationales. Office central espérantiste. 24 pp.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biblioteko Hippolyte Sebert - Unuiĝo Franca por Esperanto
  2. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 28, 2020 (French).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sebert, Hippolyte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sebert (botanical author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scientist and officer in the French army
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Verberie
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1930
Place of death Paris