Jacques Louis de Bournon

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Jacques Louis Comte de Bournon (born January 21, 1751 in Metz , † August 25, 1825 in Versailles ) was a French crystallographer and mineralogist.

Influenced by his father, Bournon became interested in minerals at an early age and was later a student of Jean-Baptiste Romé de L'Isle . As a member of the higher nobility (Comte = Count ), he first embarked on a military career, became an artillery officer and made it to lieutenant, most recently in the garrison in Grenoble. During the French Revolution he emigrated to Germany, where he served in the royalist army until it was dissolved, and England, where he returned to mineralogy. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1802 , classified the collections of English nobles ( Charles Francis Greville , Sir John St Aubyn, 5th Baronet , Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet ), gave lectures, was one of the founding members of the Geological Society of London and in 1807 1811 to 1814 first foreign secretary of this scientific society. Returned to France in 1814, he was awarded a high order by the King ( Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis , Legion of Honor ) and director of the king's mineral collection.

In 1802 he described chondrules , the silicate spheres in chondrites . He was one of the first French scientists to advocate the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites (at that time it was often assumed that they came from the moon), as they differed greatly in structure from earthly rocks. Another prominent proponent of this thesis at the time was Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni . In the analysis of meteorites he worked with Edward Charles Howard . In 1808 he published his main work on the crystallization of calcite and aragonite and took a critical look at the work of the crystallographer René-Just Haüy .

The mineral bournonite is named in his honor. He described it in 1804 and called it endellionite.

He was the brother of the novelist Charlotte de Bournon (1753-1842).

Fonts

  • Essa sur la lithologie des environs de St. Etienne-en-Forez et sur l´origine de sos charbons de pierre 1785
  • Traité complet de la chaux carbonatée et de l´aragonite, 3 volumes, 1808
  • Catalog de la collection minéralogique, 1813
  • Catalog de la colleciion minéralogique particulière du roi, 2 volumes 1817
  • Description du goniometry perfectionné 1824

literature

  • Gordon L. Herries Davies: Jacques-Louis, Comte de Bournon, Geological Society Special Publications 317, 2009, 105-113
  • Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists, Harri Deutsch 1989

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerald Joseph Home McCall, AJ Bowden, Richard John Howarth, The History of Meteoritics and Key Meteorite Collections, Geological Society Special Publications 256, 2006, 167
personal data
SURNAME Bournon, Jacques Louis de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1825
Place of death Versailles