Jean Andre Peyssonnel

Jean André Peyssonnel was born with Marseilles the June 19th 1694 and deceased the December 24th 1759 with Saint-Bertrand from the Isle-Large Earth in Guadeloupe. He was Médecin and Naturaliste.

Biography

His/her father Charles Peyssonnel, born in 1640, was a famous doctor who succumbed to 80 years with the plague of 1.720 victims of his devotion to the patients of the Hospital. His/her brother, fore-mentioned Charles like his father, born in Marseilles on December 17th, 1700 was lawyer with Aix-en-Provence and was in charge of the consulate of Smyrna where he died on June 16th, 1757.

Mr. Luigi Ferdinando, count de Marsigli (1658-1730), founder of the Institute of Bologna, initiated it with the Natural history. He undertakes various voyages on the Mediterranean coasts to study the nature of the Corail. The Academy of Science (France) named it corresponding into 1723 of Etienne-François Geoffroy (1672-1731) and as from 1731 of Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1758).

It went in North Africa in 1724. It wrote a report Voyage in the areas of Tunis and Algiers . Of return to Marseilles, it took part in the foundation of the Academy of Marseilles (1726).

Appointed royal doctor in the Guadeloupe, it left for this destination where it continued a methodical investigation of the archipelago, in particular of the Soufrière of which it gave to the Academy of Marseilles, on July 1st, 1733, a remarkable description. It continued its research on the coral. It showed that the coral belonged to the animal kingdom and worked out on this subject a work which it sent to the Academy of Science and the royal Académie of London. This work did not appear that in the form of analysis in the philosophical transactions of the royal Company of London. So that one gives reason to Jean André Peyssonnel, it was necessary to await the discovery of the fresh water hydre by Switzerland Abraham Trembley (1710-1784).

Its death which has occurred on December 24th, 1759 remained a long time ignored members of the Academy of Marseilles. It to him was paid homage only in 1778 per Mr. Collé in his speech of reception; it confirms the discovery by the chemical analysis and protests vigorously against an article of Michel Adanson (1727-1806) appeared in the supplement of the Encyclopédie .

For its part Rene-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757) initially doubted this discovery, but it is true that nobody proclaimed it then more noblement ( Mémoire to be used for the history of the insects , volume VI, p. LXXXIV).

Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon (1707-1788), in article VII of the first speech of its natural history indicates well that “Peyssonnel had observed and recognized the first which the corals owed their origin with animals”.

Homages

A street of Marseilles bears its name.

Appendices

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