Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu

Biography

Dolomieu is a village located in Isere, close to Tour-du-Pin, in the area of Grenoble. It is with the castle of Gratet de Dolomieu that is born on June 23rd 1750 Déodat Dieudonné Sylvain Guy Tancrède Gratet de Dolomieu. His/her father, marquis de Dolomieu, will have seven children, six boys and a girl. It very early registers it, towards the three years age, with the Ordre of Malta, which will mark it all its life, since its military engagement will enable him to travel and appease its scientific passion. It will succeed, in spite of its paternal title of nobility and its particle, to cross the French revolution without too much damage thanks to recognized scientific competences. After having followed a traditional formation, it turns to chemistry and the natural science; helped by a sharp intelligence and an acute sense of the observation, it is devoted soon to sciences of the ground.

At 25 years, after having studied with Metz where it is in garrison, it starts to work on gravity in the mines of Brittany. He travels then to the Portugal, with Malta, in Italy, where he studies the Etna, in Egypt. He is helped in his work of geology by Nicolas de Saussure, which analyzes the samples that he took during his research. Dolomieu thus describes several minerals new or badly known like analcime, psilomelane, beryl, emerald, the celestite and even anthracite.

In 1791, Dolomieu publishes in the Journal of physics an article entitled “On a kind of stones limestones far from effervescent with the acids and phosphorescent by the collision”. He discovered this rock in the Alps and sends some samples of them to Saussure with Geneva for analysis. It is this Swiss scientist who will slice in favor of the name “dolomite”, in homage to his inventor in March 1792, in a mail which he addresses to Dolomieu. The name of “Dolomites” will be then given towards 1876 to the area of the Italian Alps. In 1795, it is elected member of the Academy of Science. During the disorders of the Terreur, which it describes like “a dreadful storm, surrounded shelves and remains of shipwrecks”, it takes refuge with the Rock-Guyon.

Dolomieu will have an agitated end-of-life. It takes part in the Campagne of Egypt. On the way of the outward journey, Bonaparte stops in Malta and of seizes. It is Dolomieu, former knight of Malta, which is charged, well in spite of him, to negotiate rendering of it. After some scientific work on Nile, he asks his return in France for disagreement with Bonaparte. But it is captured in Calabria and is imprisoned in Sicily for 21 month for obscure reasons of political conflicts with the Order of Malta. It recovers freedom only on June 14th 1800 after the victory of the French Armies with Marengo. Very affected by this imprisonment, he dies the November 16th 1801.

The advertisement of this death to that which was its pupil with the School of the mines of Paris encouraged Jean-Baptiste Bory of Saint-Vincent to name in its homage “ Cratère Dolomieu ” the principal crater of the Piton of the Furnace, Volcan of the Réunion which it was exploring and where Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu had never put the feet. Lacépède pronounced in 1809 its Éloge with the Institut of France.

Principal publications

Voyage to the islands of Lipari , followed by a Memory on a species of volcano of air , and another on the temperature of the climate of Malta (1783)
On the earthquake of Calabria (1784)
On the islands Pounces and the volcanic products of Etna (1788)
mineralogical Philosophy , work written with the prison of Naples (1802) Text in line

Internal bond

Sedimentary rock

External bonds

Biographical note of Annals of the Mines
'' Dolomieu, gentleman geologist ''. Article of Francoise G. Bourrouilh it Jan
Dolomieu (the commune) with a page on the geologist

Note

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