Philippe Louis Voltz

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Philippe Louis Voltz (born August 15, 1785 in Strasbourg , † February 6, 1840 in Paris ) was a French mining engineer, metallurgist, geologist and fossil collector.

Life

Voltz studied from 1803 at the École polytechnique and then from 1805 at the École des Mines in Paris. He then worked in the French mining administration, first in Belgium, then on the Rhine border (Alsace, Vosges, Moselle, etc.). He dealt intensively with blast furnace technology , which he studied in England and Germany and, in particular, made wind heaters known in France. In 1833 he became a first class engineer and in 1831 a member of the Legion of Honor.

He reorganized the natural history collection of the academy in Strasbourg and built up an extensive collection of fossils, mainly of plants from the Voltzien sandstone of the Vosges, which was later named after him . It was continued by his student Wilhelm Philipp Schimper , who in 1844 published a monograph with A. Mougeot on the Triassic plant remains of the Voltzien sandstone. He also examined medicinal springs in Alsace. Unfinished extensive work on mineralogy and crystallography as well as the geological map of Alsace have remained lost.

He assisted Armand Dufrénoy (1792–1857) in organizing the paleontological collection of the École des Mines in Paris.

Honors

In 1833 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

The fossil plant genus Voltzia is named after him (by Adolphe Brongniart 1828).

Fonts

  • Notice sur le grès bigarré de la grande carrière de Soultz-les-Bains: avec observations de M. Schimper. In: Mémoires de la Société du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Strasbourg. 2, Strasbourg / Paris 1835, pp. 1–14
  • Note on the colorful sandstone of the large quarry of Sultz-Bad: with comments from WP Schimper. In: New yearbook for mineralogy, geognosy, geology and petrefacts. 1838, pp. 338-342

literature

  • Jean-Claude Gall , Léa Grauvogel tribe : The Voltzien sandstone, deposit of a delta in the early Mesozoic (Triassic, aniseed) north-eastern France. In: Dieter Meischner: European fossil deposits. Springer 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry of Philippe Louis Voltz at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Voltz, Philippe Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mining engineer, metallurgist and fossil collector
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1840
Place of death Paris