Arnold Henry Guyot

Arnold Henri Guyot ( born September 28, 1807 in Boudevilliers in Neuchatel, Switzerland, † February 8, 1884 in Princeton, USA ) was a Swiss- American naturalist and geographer.

Even in his youth he collected plants and insects. He studied at the University of Neuchâtel and theology alongside natural history. In 1825 he continued his studies in Karlsruhe. Here he lived with a family Brown, when he met Louis Agassiz ( 1807-1873 ).

Guyot moved to Berlin to prepare for a ministry. Here he decided then but to abandon the theology in favor of the natural sciences. He attended lectures by Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter. In 1835 he finished his studies with a dissertation on the natural classification of lakes. Guyot went to Paris and became tutor to the sons of the Comte de Pourtàles from an affiliated Neuchâtel nobility. This position gave him the opportunity to take long trips through Europe.

In 1838 he met Agassiz again in Paris and from the acquaintance was a lifelong friendship. On the advice of his mentor Guyot explored next summer alpine glacier and took important discoveries that he could recite thanks Agassiz before the Geological Society of France in 1838. In 1839 he went back to Switzerland and received in Neuchâtel Professor of History and Physical Geography. In the years 1840-1847 he studied erratics in Switzerland. The Revolution of 1848 hindered the work at the Academy, so he went with Agassiz to America. In Boston, he gave lectures on comparative physical geography. In 1849 he published his lecture " Earth and Man ". In 1854 he was appointed to Princeton as professor of physical geography and geology.

In 1856 he built his collections from a museum, from which today's Princeton Museum of Natural History has emerged. For the Smithsonian Institution, he established meteorological stations and put it firmly clear instructions. They formed the nucleus of today's U.S. Weather Service ( United States Weather Bureau ). Until 1881 he carried out a topographical survey of the Appalachian Mountains of Vermont to the Catskills.

In his honor, several mountains (Mount Guyot - in the North Carolina - Tennessee line in the Great Smoky Mountains, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, in the Colorado Rockies ), a glacier in Alaska ( Guyot Glacier ), a lunar crater ( Guyot Crater ) and the submarine hilltops / mountains with flat plateau back in the Pacific ( Guyot ), named.

Works

  • Earth and Man, Boston, 1849
  • On the Topography of the State New York, American J. of Science, 8, 272-276, 1852
  • On the Appalachian Mountain region, American J. of Science, 19, 429-451, 1880
  • A Memoir of Louis Agassiz in 1883
Princeton (New Jersey) Catskill Mountains Integrated Authority File
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