Horace-Bénédict de Saussure

Horace Bénédict de Saussure

Horace Benedict de Saussure Monument in Chamonix (1899)

Horace Benedict de Saussure Monument in Chamonix (2012)

Horace Bénédict de Saussure (born February 17, 1740 in Conches , † January 22, 1799 ibid) was a Geneva naturalist. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Sauss. “He is the father of Nicolas Théodore de Saussure , grandfather of Henri de Saussure and great-grandfather of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure .

life and work

Saussure received support from his father, Nicolas de Saussure, his uncle Charles Bonnet , the naturalist and poet Albrecht von Haller and the doctor Théodore Tronchin . From 1757 he studied natural sciences at the Geneva Academy , where he received his doctorate in 1759. phil. received his doctorate. In 1762, at the age of 22, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Geneva Academy.

His services to geology , of which he is to be counted among the founders, to the physics of the atmosphere and related sciences are recognized. He provided remarkable plant anatomical work. The Glaciology owes him its foundations.

He traveled to France , Italy , Sicily and explored the western Alps, especially the Chamonix massif . In 1760 he spent a significant amount of money exploring an ascent route to Mont Blanc . In 1787, a year after the first ascent of Mont Blanc, he carried out the first scientific ascent of this mountain "in the company of a servant and 18 guides". At the summit he made geological observations and comparative barometric and thermometric measurements. These measurements showed on August 3, 1787 that Mont Blanc is the highest peak in Europe.

He invented an electrometer and improved the hygrometer and similar instruments. One of the strangest is the cyanometer (Greek) he developed, an instrument for measuring the intensity of the blue sky. Alexander von Humboldt , among others, used these instruments on his American expeditions.

As the founder and president of the Society of the Arts, he made great contributions to Geneva’s factories.

Through research in the fields of meteorology , geology, mineralogy , glaciology, magnetism and electricity , he considerably expanded his knowledge of these during his time. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer mentions the natural scientist in his dissertation on the fourfold root of the sentence of sufficient reason : "SAUSSÜRE is said to have seen the rising moon from Mont Blanc so big that he did not recognize it and passed out from shock."

Saussure is considered the father of modern Alpine research . Of his writings, his Voyages dans les Alpes should be emphasized. As the first to climb the Kleiner Matterhorn , Horace Bénédict de Saussure was also a pioneer of alpinism .

In the later years of his life he participated in the new legislation of his fatherland and was a member of the Council of Two Hundred .

In 1787 he became a corresponding and in 1791 a foreign member ( associé étranger ) of the Académie des sciences . From 1788 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Honors and appreciation

Dedication names: The genus of the alpine cleavage ( Saussurea DC. ) From the sunflower family (Asteraceae, formerly Compositae) was named in honor of him and his son, Nicolas Théodore de Saussure .

The Saussure lunar crater was named after him by the International Astronomical Union in 1935 .

The asteroid (13580) de Saussure was named after him in 2010.

As a surveyor of the Matterhorn, he was depicted on the Swiss 20-franc note of the 6th series (1976–1995).

A street in Paris is named after him: the Rue de Saussure .

The mineral "Saussurite", named 1806 by Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure in honor of de Saussure, has turned out to be a dense, white to light green mixture of zoisite , scapolite , epidote , sericite and other minerals. The mineral name lives on in the term "saussuritization". This is understood to mean the alteration of calcium-rich plagioclases to fine-grained aggregates of sodium-accentuated plagioclases, epidote, zoisite, calcite , sericite and zeolites in the epizonal metamorphosis of basic igneous rocks .

The Saussure Glacier in Antarctica has been named after it since 1984

Works

Observations on l'écorce des feuilles et des pétales. 102 pp., Geneva 1762
Voyages in the Alps. , Geneva 1779–96 (4 volumes).
Essais sur L'Hygrométrie. 542 p., Samuel Fauche Pere Et Fils, Neuchatel 1783. Experiment on hygrometry , translated by Johann Daniel Titius, Leipzig, 1784.
Relation abrégée d'un voyage à la Cime du Mont-Blanc: en août 1787. 38 p., Barde & Manget Geneva 1787.
German version: Short report from a trip to the summit of Montblanc, in August 1787 , Akademische Buchhandlung, Strasburg 1788. 40 pages. Facsimile Fines Mundi Verlag, Saarbrücken 2008.
Défense de l'Hygromètre à cheveu. 82 p., Geneva 1788
Description of the deux nouvelles espèces de trémelles douées d'un mouvement spontané. Journal de Physique, Vol. 37, pp. 401-409, 1790
Manuscrits et publications de Horace-Bénédict de Saussure sur l'origine du basalte. Compilation by Albert V. Carozzi, 769 pp., Éditions Zoé, Geneva 2000. ISBN 2-88182-411-0

literature

Jo Krummacher : The idea of the little beings that crawl around on the surface of this sphere. Canarian approaches to Horace Bénédict de Saussure. Essay. In: The plateau. 24 (1994)
René Sigrist, Le capteur solaire de Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. Genèse d'une science empirique , Genève, Passé-Présent / Jullien, 1993.
René Sigrist (éd.), H.-B. de Saussure (1740-1799). Un regard sur la Terre , Genève, Georg, 2001.
Stéphane Fischer: Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. Naturaliste des Alpes . Switzerland. Jugendschriftenwerk, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7269-0662-7 .

Web links

Commons : Horace Bénédict de Saussure - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Horace Bénédict de Saussure - Sources and full texts

Images and texts from Les Voyages dans les Alpes by HB de Saussure can be found in the VIATIMAGES portal .
Literature by and about Horace-Bénédict de Saussure in the catalog of the German National Library
Author entry and list of the described plant names for Horace-Bénédict de Saussure at the IPNI
Editor / GL: Saussure, Horace Bénédict de. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Der Bergsteiger de Saussure , biography on emmet.de
[1] René Sigrist, Le capteur solaire de Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. Genèse d'une science empirique , Genève, Passé-Présent, 1993.
Patrick Bungener: Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799), cet illustrre inconnu… Saussurea 32, pp. 61–66, 2002 (PDF 5.5 MB, French)

Individual evidence

↑ Link to a cyanometer image
^ List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 25, 2020 (French).
^ Entry on Saussure, Horace Benedict de (1740 - 1799) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Saussure, Horace-Bénédict de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Saussure, Horace Bénédict de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swiss naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH	February 17, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH	Conches
DATE OF DEATH	January 22, 1799
Place of death	Geneva

[1] Link to a cyanometer image

[2] List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 25, 2020 (French).

[3] Entry on Saussure, Horace Benedict de (1740 - 1799) in the archive of the Royal Society , London

[Burkhardt_2018-4] Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .