Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy

Jean Baptiste Julien d' Omalius d' Halloy ( born February 16, 1783 in Liege, † January 15, 1875 in Brussels) was a Belgian geologist.

D' Halloy came from a wealthy aristocratic family and was sent in 1801 to study in Paris. There he became interested in science through the study of the works of Buffon and visiting the Natural History Museum in the Jardin des Plantes. He changed in the following years, between Belgium and studying in Paris (among others at Fourcroy, La Cepede, Jean -Baptiste de Lamarck, Étienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire and Georges Cuvier ), in which he undertook geologic excursions in France. He received the official order for a geological map of the then Empire ( France and neighboring areas ), for which he was exempted from military service in return. He devoted himself with great energy and traveled to about 1813 France, parts of Italy, where he lay back through over 15,500 miles. Then his relatives persuaded him to desist, so that the geological map was not published until 1822. It served as the basis of the later maps of Dufrenoy and Elie de Beaumont. D' Halloy turned meanwhile to politicians and administrative career. He was sub - director of the arrondissement of Dinant, Secretary General of the Province of Liège, and in 1815 Governor of Namur, which he remained until after the revolution of 1830. In 1848 he became a member of the Belgian Senate in 1851 and its vice-president. He retained an interest in geology and made occasional excursions yet, but devoted himself otherwise more of the philosophy and ethnology. He was a devout Catholic and tried to bring faith and science in harmony, but was also advocate of the theory of evolution.

As a geologist he examined, among others, the carbon in the Rhineland and Belgium and the Tertiary of the Paris Basin. He coined in 1822 the name of the geological era chalk.

In 1816 he became a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences in Brussels and in 1850 its president.

Writings

  • Description géologique the Pays -Bas, 1828
  • Eléments de Géologie, 1831
  • Introduction à la Géologie, 1883
  • Coup d'oeil sur la géologie de la Belgique, 1842
  • Precis elementaire de Géologie, 1843
  • Abrégé de Géologie, 1853
  • Des Races humaines Eléments ou d ' Ethnography, 1845
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Integrated Authority File
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