Louis Benjamin Fleuriau de Bellevue

Louis Benjamin Fleuriau de Bellevue (born February 23, 1761 in La Rochelle ; † February 9, 1852 ibid) was a French naturalist (geologist), philanthropist and politician.

Life

Fleuriau de Belleville came from a wealthy Protestant family in La Rochelle who owned a plantation in Santo Domingo. From 1770 to 1781 he was educated Protestant at the Academy of Geneva, where he was introduced to the natural sciences by Horace Bénédict de Saussure . After the death of his father in 1787, he traveled through Europe on a geological study tour until 1793 (interrupted by stays in La Rochelle). He visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius, Sicily and Mount Etna, Malta, the rest of Italy, southern Germany, Switzerland and the Alps (where he was with Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu in South Tyrol in 1789 and made friends with him). A number of treatises emerged from this. His extensive geological-paleontological collection, his library and his ethnographic collection came to the Natural History Museum of La Rochelle, which was created from a museum of the Natural History Association of Charente-Inférieur, which he co-founded in 1835.

In 1804 he published on volcanoes he had seen in action in Italy (and advocated Plutonism and against the Neptunists ), and on an earthquake in Calabria in 1783 (which Dolomieu had also dealt with), dealt with meteorology , studied the Jonzac meteorite fall of 1819 and published on mineralogy , examining crystals with a microscope. He also described fossil plants (more precisely a fossil forest with Cretaceous lignite fossils, which is easily accessible thanks to the large tidal range) on the Île-d'Aix . His publications made an impression on contemporary geologists and he maintained contacts with scientists in Paris such as Alexandre Brongniart and Alexander von Humboldt .

He was in the Conseille Générale of Charente-Inférieur from 1801 to 1850 , was on the La Rochelle City Council from 1804 until his death (although he refused to become mayor on several occasions) and from 1820 to 1830 he was a deputy in the National Assembly of Charente-Inférieure.

In 1808 he was president of the Académie des belles-lettres, sciences et arts de La Rochelle. In 1816 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences . In 1821 he became a knight and in 1825 an officer of the Legion of Honor .

literature

• Christian Moreau: Louis-Benjamin Fleuriau de Bellevue (1761-1852): physicien naturaliste, géologue, notable et philanthrope rochelais, Travaux de Comité Francais d'Histoire de la Geologie, 3rd series, volume 24, 2010, no. 1, pdf
• Christian Moreau: Louis Benjamin Fleuriau de Bellevue - Savant, physicien naturaliste, géologue et philanthrope rochelais (1761–1852), Les Indes savantes, Paris 2009

Web links

• Biographical information from the deputies of the National Assembly