Joachim Barrande

Joachim Barrande.

Joachim Barrande (born August 11, 1799 in Saugues , Haute-Loire , France ; † October 5, 1883 in Frohsdorf , Lower Austria) was a French geologist , paleontologist and engineer . The Prague district of Barrandov was named after the explorer of the trilobites . The geological area name Barrandium for the Prager Mulde goes back to Barrandes work.

Life

After studying engineering in Paris , he was employed at the court of Charles X as a tutor for his grandson Henri de Chambord and in 1830 accompanied the Bourbon royal family into exile in England and Scotland . There he studied the writings of the British paleontologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison , because even during his studies he was very interested in the works of the French naturalists Georges Cuvier and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck . In 1832 he traveled to Prague with Henri de Chambord .

In Prague society Barrande got to know the leading Bohemian scholars in the area around the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia, such as Kaspar Maria von Sternberg , Josef Dobrovský , Václav Hanka , Franz Xaver Maximilian Zippe and František Palacký , who taught Chambord the German language. Sternberg asked the engineer for a technical report on the Prague – Lana horse-drawn tram, which had been closed the previous year due to construction defects . When Barrande came across very well-preserved trilobites made of Cambrian rocks in the course of investigations into the continuation of the railway between Kladno and Pilsen near Skrei ( Skryje nad Berounkou ) and Moderhof ( Týřovice nad Berounkou ) in the Berounka valley , he finally decided in favor the natural sciences and between 1840 and 1850 undertook extensive investigations into the deposits from the Silurian period in Bohemia. His preoccupation with fossil finds in the vicinity of Prague was made easier because from 1840 he worked as asset manager and general agent for Comte Chambord and his relatives ( Bourbons ) who had gone into exile within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Shortly after the appearance of Murchison's description of the Silurian in 1839, Barrande published his main work between 1852 and 1881, the 21-volume description of the sediments from the Silurian (today partly also in the Ordovician ) in Bohemia, to which after his death in the Years 1887 and 1894 two more volumes followed.

Barrande had become a well-known figure in public life in Prague and in particular in the Lesser Town of Prague . He became friends with the writer Jan Neruda , whose mother Barbora Barrandes ran the household and taught him the Czech language . He identified over 3,500 new species and, contrary to international practice, mainly used Czech names.

In August 1883 Barrande traveled to Frohsdorf to arrange the estate and funeral of his friend Henri de Chambord . There the 84-year-old contracted pneumonia , from which he died on October 5th. He was buried on October 8th in Lanzenkirchen .

Barrande left behind an extensive collection of fossils , which he bequeathed to the Royal Bohemian State Museum (now the National Museum ) in accordance with his will . Today it is in a building in which the scientist often went in and out during his lifetime to visit the Sternberg Palace in the Prague district of Hradschin .

Honors

Barrandes name on the Barrande rock on the Vltava

The Geological Society of London awarded him the Wollaston Medal in 1857 for his scientific achievements in the field of geology . On November 10, 1860 (matriculation no. 1945) he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 1862 in the American Philosophical Society , 1867 in the National Academy of Sciences , 1873 in the Göttingen Academy of Sciences , 1875 in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1877 .

In 1881 he was made an honorary member of the Nassau Association for Natural History . Also in 1881 he received the Cothenius Medal of the Leopoldina .

In his honor, a memorial plaque was placed on a rock on the left bank of the Vltava in Prague on June 14, 1884 . The Barrandov district of Prague has had his name since February 2, 1928, as has the Barrandovský most motorway bridge built in 1983 below the Barrandov district . In addition to numerous kinds of fossils, the mineral was Barrandit and geological zone Barrandium in Bohemia named after him.

Selected Works

Notice préliminaire sur le système Silurien et les Trilobites de Bohème. CL Hirschfeld, Leipzig 1846 ( archive )
Nouveaux Trilobites Supplement a la notice préliminaire sur le système Silurien et les Trilobites de Bohème. Calve, Prague 1846 ( Archives )
Graptolytes de Bohème. Prague 1850
Système silurien du Center de la Bohème. Prague, Paris 1852–1881, 21 volumes
Defense des Colonies. Part I, Prague, Paris 1861
Defense des Colonies. Part II, Prague, Paris 1862

Web links

Commons : Joachim Barrande - collection of images, videos and audio files

Works by and about Joachim Barrande in the German Digital Library
Biography (german)
Biography
Geopark Barrandien (German)
Nouveaux trilobites-Volume 1 , Prague, 1846, E-Book of the University Library Vienna ( eBooks on Demand )

Individual evidence

^ Heinrich Küpfer: Joachim Barrande and the Austrian Geological Circle . In: Yearbook of the Federal Geological Institute. 1988 (131), pp. 127-131
^ Willi Ule : History of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian German Academy of Natural Scientists during the years 1852–1887 . With a look back at the earlier times of its existence. In commission at Wilh. Engelmann in Leipzig, Halle 1889, supplements and additions to Neigebaur's history, p. 193 ( archive.org ).
↑ Member entry by Joachim Barrande at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on September 10, 2017.
↑ 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. 31.

personal data
SURNAME	Barrande, Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French geologist, paleontologist and engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 11, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH	Saugues , Haute-Loire department
DATE OF DEATH	October 5, 1883
Place of death	Frohsdorf , Lower Austria

[1] Heinrich Küpfer: Joachim Barrande and the Austrian Geological Circle . In: Yearbook of the Federal Geological Institute. 1988 (131), pp. 127-131

[2] Willi Ule : History of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian German Academy of Natural Scientists during the years 1852–1887 . With a look back at the earlier times of its existence. In commission at Wilh. Engelmann in Leipzig, Halle 1889, supplements and additions to Neigebaur's history, p. 193 ( archive.org ).

[3] Member entry by Joachim Barrande at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on September 10, 2017.

[4] 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. 31.