Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin

Charles Louis Joseph Xavier de la Vallée- Poussin ( born April 6, 1827 in Namur, † March 15, 1903 in Brussels) was a Belgian geologist.

De la Vallée Poussin was the son of a French officer and a Flemish woman. He studied at Collége Notre -Dame-de -la- Paix in Namur and subsequently in Paris mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique, then devoted himself but ten years of literature and philosophy, among others, as a critic in Paris. In 1863 he became professor of geology and mineralogy at the Catholic University of Leuven ( on the recommendation of the Belgian geologist Jean Baptiste Julien d' Omalius d' Halloy ).

It examined in particular the metamorphic and crystalline rocks of the Ardennes, often with Alphonse Renard (1842-1903), but also the stratigraphy of the limestones of the Carboniferous of the Ardennes. One of the resulting monographs received in 1876 the price of Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences. He also wrote popular science articles and was instrumental in the preparatory work for the geological map of Belgium. In his death in 1903 he was the Vice- President of the Commission in this regard.

He was the father of the mathematician Charles- Jean de la Vallée Poussin.

In 1876 he became an honorary doctorate from the University lion. In 1885 he became a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences.

Writings

• With Renard: Mémoire sur les caractères minéralogiques stratigraphiques et des roches de la Belgique et dites plutoniennes de l' Ardenne française, Brussels 1876