Joachim Barrande
Joachim Barrande ( born August 11, 1799 in Saugues, Haute -Loire, France, † October 5, 1883 in Frohsdorf, Lower Austria ) was a French geologist, paleontologist and engineer. According to the researchers of the trilobites of the Prague Barrandov district was named. The geological field name Barrandium for the Prague goes back to dump Barrandes work.
Life
After completing his engineering studies in Paris, he was at the court of Charles X. hired as a tutor for his grandson Henri de Chambord and accompanied 1830, the Bourbon royal family into exile in England and Scotland. There he studied the writings of the British paleontologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, because while he was studying the works of the French naturalist Georges Cuvier and Jean -Baptiste de Lamarck had him very interested. In 1832 he traveled with Henri de Chambord to Prague.
In the Prague Society Barrande learned the leading Czech scientists in the context of the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia, as taught the German language Kaspar Maria von Sternberg, Josef Dobrovský, Václav Hanka, Franz Xaver Maximilian Zippe and František Palacký, the Chambord, know. Sternberg asked the engineer for a technical opinion to the previously set in the year due to lack of building horse-drawn tram Prague Lana. As Barrande in the course of investigations on the continuation of the path between Kladno and Pilsen in the places Skrei ( Skryje nad Berounkou ) and Moderhof met ( Tyrovice nad Berounkou ) in the valley of Berounka very well preserved trilobites from the Cambrian rocks, he decided finally for the natural Sciences and undertook 1840-1850 extensive studies of the deposits from the Silurian period in Bohemia. His studies of fossils found in the area of Prague was made easier because he worked since 1840 as an asset manager and chief representative for Comte de Chambord and his exiled relatives ( Bourbon ) within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Shortly after the appearance of Murchison's description of the Silurian in 1839 published Barrande 1852-1881 his main work, the 21 -volume Description of the deposits from the Silurian (now made partly in Ordovician ) in Bohemia, to which the after his death in years 1887 and 1894 yet was followed by two further volumes.
Barrande had become a well-known public figure in Prague and in particular the Lesser Town. The writer Jan Neruda, whose mother led Barbora Barrandes household and taught him the Czech language, he formed a friendship. He appointed more than 3,500 new species and used it contrary to international practice, mainly Czech names.
In August 1883 Barrande traveled to Frohsdorf to settle the estate and the funeral of his friend Henri de Chambord. There, the 84 -year-old pneumonia moved to where he died on October 5. He was buried on 8 October in Lanz churches.
Barrande left a large collection of fossils, which he (the present National Museum ) bequeathed his will, according to the Royal Bohemian National Museum. Today, it is in a building in which to visit the scientist often a lifetime and went out, the Sternberg Palace in Prague's Hradcany.
Honors
The Geological Society of London awarded him in 1857 for his scientific achievements in the field of geology, the Wollaston Medal. In 1860 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
In 1881 he was made an honorary member of the Nassau Association for Natural History.
In his honor, took place on 14 June 1884, the installation of a memorial plaque on a rock on the left bank of the Vltava river in Prague. The Prague's Barrandov bears since February 2, 1928 his name, as well as the 1983 built beneath the motorway bridge district Barrandov Barrandov most. In addition to numerous fossil species, the mineral and geological zone Barrandit Barrandium was named after him in Bohemia.
Selected Works
- Trilobites Nouveaux de Bohème. Prague 1846
- Notice sur le système préliminaire Silurien et les Trilobites de Bohème. Leipzig 1846
- Graptolytes de Bohème. Prague 1850
- Silurien Système du Centre de la Bohème. Prague, Paris 1852-1881, 21 volumes
- Defense of the Colonies. Part I, Prague, Paris 1861
- Defense of the Colonies. Part II, Prague, Paris 1862