Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy
Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy (born February 16, 1783 in Liège , † January 15, 1875 in Brussels ) was a Belgian geologist.
Life
D'Halloy came from a wealthy noble family and was sent to Paris in 1801 to study. There he became interested in the natural sciences by studying the works of Buffon and visiting the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes . In the following years he switched between Belgium and studying in Paris (among others with Fourcroy , Lacépède , Lamarck , Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Georges Cuvier ), where he also undertook geological excursions in France. He received the official order for a geological map of the then empire (France and neighboring areas), for which he was released from military service in return. He devoted himself to the task with great energy and toured France and parts of Italy until about 1813, covering over 15,500 miles. Then his relatives convinced him to refrain from doing so, so the geological map was not published until 1822. It served as the basis for the later maps by Dufrénoy and Elie de Beaumont . D'Halloy, meanwhile, turned to a career in politics and administration. He became sub-director of the arrondissement of Dinant , general secretary of the province of Liège and from 1815 governor of Namur , which he remained until after the revolution of 1830. In 1848 he became a member of the Belgian Senate and in 1851 its vice-president. He kept an interest in geology and occasionally went on excursions, but otherwise devoted himself more to philosophy and ethnology. He was a staunch Catholic and tried to reconcile faith and science, but was also an advocate of the theory of evolution.
As a geologist, he examined, among other things, the Carboniferous in the Rhineland and Belgium and the Tertiary of the Paris Basin. In 1822 he coined the name of the geological age chalk .
In 1816 he became a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences in Brussels and in 1850 its president. In 1842 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . In 1873 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society .
Fonts
- Description géologique des Pays-Bas , 1828
- Eléments de Géologie , 1831
- Introduction à la Géologie , 1883
- Coup d'oeil sur la geologie de la Belgique , 1842
- Precis elementaire de Géologie , 1843
- Abrégé de Géologie , 1853
- Des Races humaines ou Eléments d 'Ethnography , 1845
literature
- R. de Bont A serpent without teeth. The conservative transformism of Jean-Baptiste d'Omalius d'Halloy (1783-1875) , Centaurus, Volume 49, 2007, pp. 114-137
- Goulven Laurent: D'Omalius d'Halloy et la naissance de la paleontologie évolutive. Travaux du Comité fr. Hist. Géol., (1), No. 7, 1977
Web links
- Catholic encyclopedia
- Biography with photo
- Entry for Omalius d'Halloy, Jean Baptiste Julien d '(1783-1875) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
Individual evidence
- ^ List of members since 1666: Letter O. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 29, 2020 (French).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | d'Omalius d'Halloy, Jean Baptiste |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian geologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 16, 1783 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Liege |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 15, 1875 |
| Place of death | Brussels |