CONSTANT

See also:

• PREVOST, ANTOINE FRANCOIS (1697–1763)
• CONSTANT PREVOST (1787-1856)
• PREVOST, EUGENE MARCEL (1862- )
• PREVOST, PIERRE (1751-1839)

PREVOST (1787-1856)  , French geologist, was born in Paris on the 4th of June 1787, and was son of Louis Prevost, receiver of the rentes of that city . He was educated at the Central Schools, where, inspired by the lectures of G . Cuvier, Alexandre Brongniart and A . Dumeril, he determined to devote himself to natural science . He took his degree in Letters and Sciences in 1811, and for a time pursued the study of medicine and anatomy . Mainly through the influence of Brongniart he turned his attention to geology, and during the years 1816-1819 made a special study of the Vienna Basin where he pointed out for the first time the presence of Tertiary strata like those of the Paris Basin, but including a series of later date . His next work (1821) was an essay on the geology of parts of Normandy, with special reference to the Secondary strata, which he compared with those of England . From 1821-1829 he was professor of geology at the Athenaeum at Paris, and he took a leading part with Ami Bone, G . P . Deshayes and Jules Desnoyers in the founding of the Geological Society of France (183o) . In 1831 he became assistant professor and after-wards honorary professor of geology to the faculty of sciences . Having studied the volcanoes of Italy and Auvergne, he opposed the views of von Buch regarding craters of elevation, maintaining that the cones were due to the material successively errnpted .

Like

Lyell he advocated a study of the causes or forces now in action in order to illustrate the past . One of his more important memoirs was De la Chronologie des terrains et du synchronisme des formations (1845) . He died in Paris on the 17th of August 1856 . Memoir with portrait, by J . Gosselet, Ann. soc. geol. du nord, tome xxv . 1896 .