Jean-André Deluc

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean-André Deluc

Jean-André Deluc (also: Jean-André de Luc ; born February 8, 1727 in Geneva ; † November 7, 1817 in Clewer near Windsor ) was a Swiss geologist and meteorologist . He was a pioneer of stratigraphy in geology.

Life

Deluc was the son of the wealthy watchmaker and writer Jacques-François Deluc. He should become a businessman, studied science and mathematics and began to be interested in geology and palaeontology and collected minerals, rocks and fossils in the Alps and the Swiss Jura. He became famous for improvements to the thermometer (using mercury instead of alcohol), invented a hygrometer made of ivory and built barometers . He improved the barometric height formula of Edmond Halley .

He was a member of the Geneva People's Party and in 1770 became a member of the Grand Council (Council of Two Hundred). In 1768 he was ambassador to Bern and Paris. In 1774 he went to London , where he was a reader of the Queen of England Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz . In 1798 he was appointed honorary professor of philosophy and geology in Göttingen , but never lived there, but alternated between Berlin , Hanover , Braunschweig and London.

He was involved in scientific disputes with Horace Bénédict de Saussure (on barometry) and James Hutton (on erosion ). The latter controversy was u. a. determined by the opposing positions of the two scholars on geological history. While Hutton was one of the trailblazers of actualism , Deluc took an explicitly catastrophic point of view in geological terms , assuming repeated geological revolutions ( cataclysmic upheavals).

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society , a member of the Académie des Sciences and, since 1808, a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1815 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

The lunar crater Deluc is named after him.

Works

  • Recherches sur les modifications de l'atmosphère ou théorie des baromètres et des thermomètres (Geneva 1772, 2 vol .; 1784, 4 vol .; German von Gehler, Leipzig 1776)
  • Lettres physiques et morales sur les montagnes, et sur l'histoire de la terre et de l'homme (The Hague 1778–1780, 6 vols.)
  • Idées sur la metéorologie 1786
  • Nouvelles idées sur la météorologie (Paris 1787, 2 vol .; German von Wittekopp, Berlin 1788)
  • Lettres à Blumenbach sur l'histoire physique de la terre (Paris 1798)
  • Lettres à Lamétherie , in: Journal de Physique, Paris 1790 to 1793
  • Introduction à la physique terrestre par les fluides expansibles (Paris 1803, 2 vols.)
  • Voyage géologique dans le Nord de l'Europe (London 1810, 3 vols.)
  • Voyage géologique en Angleterre (1811, 2 vols.)
  • Voyages géologiques en France, en Suisse et en Allemagne (1813, 2 vols.)

literature

  • Marita Hübner: Jean André Deluc (1727–1817): Protestant culture and modern nature research , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-56942-9
  • John Heilbron & René Sigrist (eds.): Jean-André Deluc. Historian of Earth and Man , Geneva, Slatkine, 2011.
  • François Ellenberger , Gabriel Gohau: A l'aurore de la stratigraphie paleontologique: Jean-André De Luc, son influence sur Cuvier, Revue d'histoire des sciences, Volume 34, 1981, 217-257, online
  • Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus : about the formation of the globe and in particular about the teaching building of Mr. de Luc . Carl Ernst Bohn, Hamburg 1802, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10706998-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member entry by Jean André Deluc at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 25, 2017.
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 156.

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.
To refer to the Meyers article afterwards, you can{{ Meyers Online | Volume | Page}} to use.
personal data
SURNAME Deluc, Jean-André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss geologist and meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1727
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1817
Place of death Clewer at Windsor