Louis Bourguet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louis Bourguet (born April 23, 1678 in Nîmes , † December 31, 1742 in Neuchâtel ) was a Neuchâtel polymath , known for his early contributions to geology and paleontology .

Life

Bourguet was the son of Huguenot refugees. His father, Jean, was a wealthy businessman who, after the Edict of Nantes , went with his family first to Geneva and then to Zurich , where he founded luxury goods factories. Bourguet briefly went to school (college) in Zurich in 1688, and then entered the family business. He first toured Italy in 1697 and 1699, where he continued his education and learned Hebrew from a rabbi . Later he was often in Italy and lived in Venice from 1711 to 1715, studying with Jakob Hermann in Padua and possibly with Bernardino Zendrini during this time . In 1702 he married Susanne Jourdan, also a Huguenot. After the Huguenot refugees were expelled from Zurich, he lived in Bern and then in Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel) , where he became a citizen in 1704 and gathered a group of scholars of natural scientists around him. Around 1715 he increasingly gave up his profession as a businessman and had to declare bankruptcy in Basel and Geneva in 1721 , after which he had to sell his collections. In 1715 he finally moved to Neuchâtel and then hardly left Switzerland (apart from a trip to Holland in 1725 to solve problems with the printing of his books). At the insistence of his friends, he applied for a law professorship in Lausanne in 1717 , but withdrew. His health deteriorated from 1718. He gave private lessons in Neuchâtel, held public lectures there and in 1731 he became professor of mathematics and philosophy in a chair created for him in Neuchâtel (at that time the city had no university).

Bourguet is known as an early geologist who studied the nature of fossils , which he, like John Woodward, saw as marine creatures and relics of a great flood. According to him, the flood led to the dissolution of the previous world and the formation of new mountains. He compared the detailed structure of fossils such as ammonites or nummulites with that of stalactites or minerals , for example , which, according to him, clearly demonstrated their organic origin. But he also emphasized that they are made of the same material as the surrounding rock. From 1708 he collected fossils in the Swiss Jura and later in Italy. His treatise on fossils contains images of fossils he collected himself and those from the works of Karl Niklaus Lang and Johann Jakob Scheuchzer . The book also includes a bibliography on paleontology and a list of references.

Bourguet, who spoke many languages, also dealt with numismatics and archeology , among other things he tried to decipher Etruscan , which made him particularly well known in his time. He took the view of a common origin for all people and languages ​​(with Hebrew as the original language). He collected rare books (including Bibles in almost fifty languages, which he also used for language studies), antiques and archaeological finds. During his time in Italy from 1711 to 1715, he dealt with the infinitesimal calculus of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and corresponded with it on Chinese binary numbers, among other things .

In 1728 he co-founded the Bibliothèque italique in Geneva and in 1732 of the Mercure suisse (later Journal helvetique ). He corresponded with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Johann I Bernoulli , Johann Jakob Scheuchzer , Gian Girolamo Zannichelli , Antonio Vallisneri and René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and was a member of the academies in Berlin (1731), Paris and the Etruscan Academy in Cortona ( Tuscany ).

Fonts

  • Dissertation on les pierres figures. 1711 (unpublished, against the theses of Karl Lang on fossils)
  • Lettres philosophiques sur la formation des sels et des cristaux. Amsterdam 1729, 2nd edition 1762 (written 1723, with annex Memoire sur la theorie de la terre )
  • Traité des petrifications. Avec figures. 2 volumes, Paris 1742, 2nd edition 1778 (compilation, with contributions by himself and others, such as Pierre Cartier)
  • Opuscules mathématiques, contenant de nouvelles théories pour la résolution des equations de deux, trois et quatre degrés. Suffering 1704

He also published articles anonymously or under the pseudonym Philaléthe or Philanthrope.

literature

  • Francois Ellenberger: Dictionary of Scientific Biography .
  • Kenneth L. Taylor: Natural Law in Eighteenth Century Geology: The Case of Louis Bourguet. In: Actes du XIIIe Congres International d'Histoire des Sciences. Volume 8, 1971, pp. 72-80.
  • FA Jeanneret, JH Bonhote: Louis Bourguet. In: FA Jeanneret, Eric Alexandre: biography neuchateloise. Volume 1, Le Locle, 1863, pp. 59-80.
  • H. Perrochon: Un homme du XVIIIe siecle: Louis Bourguet. In: Vie, revue suisse romande. Volume 1, 1951, pp. 34-38.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bourguet, Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss paleontologist, geologist, mathematician and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1678
PLACE OF BIRTH Nîmes
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1742
Place of death Neuchâtel NE