Louis Albert Necker

Louis Albert Necker ( also: Louis -Albert Necker de Saussure, born April 10, 1786 in Geneva, † November 20, 1861 in Portree, Scotland ) was a Swiss mineralogist ( crystallographer ), geologist, zoologist and Diet Messenger.

Life and work

Louis Albert Necker was the son of Jacques Necker ( nephew of the same name French Finance Minister Jacques Necker ) and his wife Albertine. He studied from 1800 to 1802 at the Academy of Geneva and from 1806 to 1808 Geology in Edinburgh. Necker traveled to the Scottish highlands and wrote a geography of Scotland and its first geological map. After his return to Switzerland, he worked from 1810 to 1817 as an assistant professor and from 1817 to 1835 as Honorary Professor of Mineralogy and Geology in Geneva. From 1816 to 1832 belonged to the Necker those representing council of Geneva, 1818, he was Tagsatzung Messenger. He has published scientific works about the region Geneva and Switzerland. Later, Necker held as a private scholar often in Scotland, in 1841, he remained permanently on the Hebridean Isle of Skye Portree in the place where he died and was buried. He was an avid mountaineer.

Necker cube

He gained a greater awareness through the design of the optical illusion known as the Necker cube.

Works

• Voyage en Ecosse et aux Iles Hébrides, 1821.