ALEXANDRE

See also:

• BRONGNIART, ADOLPHE THEODORE (1801–1876)
• ALEXANDRE BRONGNIART (1770-1847)

BRONGNIART (1770-1847)  , French mineralogist and geologist, son of the eminent architect who designed the Bourse and other public buildings of Paris, was born in that city on the 5th of February 1770 . At an early age he studied chemistry, under Lavoisier, and after passing through the Icole des Mines he took honours at the Ecole de Medecine; subsequently he joined the army of the Pyrenees as pharmacien; but having committed some slight political offence, he was thrown into prison and detained there for some time . Soon after his release he was appointed professor of natural history in the College des Quatre Nations . In 1800 he was made director of the Sevres porcelain factory, a post which he retained to his death, and in which he achieved his greatest work . In his hands Sevres became the leading porcelain factory in Europe, and the researches of an able band of assistants enabled him to lay the foundations of ceramic chemistry . In addition to his work at Sevres, quite enough to engross the entire energy of any ordinary man, he continued his more purely scientific work . He succeeded Hauy as professor of mineralogy in the Museum of Natural History; but he did not confine himself to mineralogy, for it is to him that we owe the division of Reptiles into the four orders of Saurians, Batrachians, Chelonians and Ophidians . Fossil as well as living animals engaged his attention, and in his studies of the strata around Paris he was instrumental in establishing the Tertiary formations . In 1816 he was elected to the Academy; and in the following year he visited the Alps of Switzerland and Italy, and afterwards Sweden and Norway . The result of his observations was published from time to time in the Journal des Mines and other scientific journals . Wide as was the range of his interests his most famous work was accomplished at Sevres, and his most enduring monument is his classic Traite des arts ceramiques (1844) . He died in Paris on the 7th of October 1847 .

His other

principal works are:—Traite elimentaire de mineralogie, avec des applications aux arts (2 vols., Paris, 1807); Histoire naturelle des crustaces fossiles (Paris, 1822) ; Classification et caracteres mineralogiques des roches homogenes et heterogenes (Paris, 1827) ; the Tableau des terrains qui composent l' ecorce du globe, ou Essai sur.la structure de la partie connue de la terre (Paris, 1829) ; and the Traite des arts ceramiques (1844).•, Brongniart was also the coadjutor of Cuvier in the admirable Essai sur la geographic mineralogique des environs de Paris (Paris, 181i); originally published in Ann . Mus . Hist . Nat . (Paris, xi . 18o8) .