Charles Athanase Walckenaer

Charles Athanase Walckenaer ( born December 25, 1771 in Paris, † April 28, 1852 in Paris) was a French civil servant and scientist. As a zoologist, he was interested arthropods and here it was the spiders (Arachnida ) which fell to his attention. He was a personality universally educated, he was a philosopher, naturalist, geographer, historian, artist and writer, and left a considerable literary production, large encyclopedic qualities.

Life

Walckenaer was born in Paris and studied at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow. In 1793 he was appointed Inspector General of the Army for military transport or transport in the Pyrenees. When he was instructed in the same year of abuse of office, he fled to the Kingdom of Spain, sat upon his return to France continue his education, he attended technical courses at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the École Polytechnique in Paris. He gets a job in the latter. In 1813 was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and knighted in 1823 for Baron. If later mayor maire of the 5th District Ve arrondissement de Paris 5th arrondissement, the Arrondissement de Panthéon. As Chief Secretary of the Prefecture ( Prefect of the Seine 1816-1825 ), in 1826 prefect préfet of Nièvre and 1828 of Aisne. In 1830 he was deposed and devoted himself to the sciences in a row. He co-founded the Société entomologique de France ( 1832).

1832, and bought Walckenaer a very old world map by a traveling companion of Christopher Columbus ( 1451-1506 ), the Spanish navigator, cartographer and explorer Juan de la Cosa ( 1449-1510 ) was designed in 1500. This Fund, he informed promptly Alexander von Humboldt. After Walckenaers death of this valuable document was purchased at the instigation of Ramón de la Sagras out by the Spanish Government. Other statements by Alexander von Humboldt in the spring of 1832 this card was returned to the library of Walckenaer in Paris, the Juan de la Cosa had made in 1500 of the New World.

In 1839 he was appointed curator of the Department of tickets at the Royal Library in Paris and since 1840 secretary for life of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He co-founded the Société entomologique de France in 1832 and was its president twice in 1835 and 1841.

Named after Walckenaer taxa

His name was also supported by the almost ubiquitous, species-rich and frequent genus Walckenaeria the dwarf and canopy spiders in the world.

Works

• Essai sur l' histoire de l' espèce humaine Paris: DuPont, 1798
• La monde maritime ( 4 volumes, 1818)
• Recherches sur l' intérieur de l' géographiques Afrique septentrionale. Bertrand, Paris 1821 digitized
• Histoire générale des voyages ( 21 volumes, 1826-1831 )
• Géographie ancienne, historique et comparée the Gauls (3 volumes, 1839, new edition 1862)
• Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de la Fontaine (1820 and 1840)
• Histoire de la vie et des poésies d' Horace
• Mémoires touchant la vie et les Écrits de Marie de Rabutin -Chantal
• With P. Gervais: Histoire naturelle des insectes ( 4 volumes, 1836-1847 )
• Collection des relations de voyages par mer et par terre: en Afrique de l' differentes parties depuis 1400 jusqu'à nos jours Vol 6, Paris, 1842.

In 1845 he published the works of La Bruyère in the original text.