Louis Ramond de Carbonnières

Louis François Elisabeth Ramond, baron de Carbonnières is a politician, a geologist and a Botaniste French, born the January 4th 1755 with Strasbourg and dead the May 14th 1827 with Paris. He is regarded as one of the first explorers of the Pyrenean high mountain being able to be qualified of pyreneist.

Biography

Louis Ramond is the son of Pierre-Bernard Ramond (1715-1796), treasurer of war, and Queen-Rosalie Eisentraut (1732-1762).

He started to study the right to the Université of Strasbourg in 1775 and became lawyer in February 1777. He bound amity with another student, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-1792), writer of the current Sturm und Drang. Ramond then discovered the Littérature romantic allemande and in particular the Souffrances of the young person Werther of Goethe (1749-1832), which decided it to launch out in the writing. It published in 1777 the Last adventures of the young person of Olban .

Ramond undertook, in May 1777, a voyage in Suisse. It met writers and poets there, but also of the scientists: the Theology N Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), the zoologists Albrecht von To haul (1708-1777) and Charles Bonnet (1720-1793); it found also his friend Lenz. The two men shared a extatic experiment by contemplating the valley of the the Rhine. Ramond was caught passion for the high mountain. A few days later, Lenz lived his first crisis of insanity. In 1778, it made appear the Élégies , impressed of its love for nature. Extracts were published by it the same year in the Journal of the Ladies of Claude-Joseph Dorat (1734-1780).

In 1779, Ramond and its father settled in Paris. In 1780, Louis published the War of Alsace during the Great Schism of Occident , epopee romantic and historical. But the capital was not yet sensitive to the romanticism from Germany and it did not meet the reception which it hoped for.

It left Paris then and went back to Strasbourg, where it was put at the service of the cardinal of Louis Rene Edouard de Rohan (1734-1803), prince de Rohan and cardinal-archbishop of Strasbourg, famous to have taken share with the Affaire of the collar of the queen. Near the prince, Ramond travelled much and met many personalities. The cardinal was sent in exile to Chair-God in June 1786. He left in Auvergne accompanied by his faithful secretary. Ramond discovered the flora of this area. The cardinal wished to go in a thermal city in the Pyrenees and Ramond left as a scout. The two men spent the summer and the autumn 1787 to Barèges. In order to better know the geological formation of this mountain, which was the subject then of controversies fed in particular by the theory of Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750-1801), and to know if it were granitic, like the the Alps, or limestone, as the mountains which one believed older, Ramond started to explore this solid mass. He traversed the highest zones of Gavarnie to the Maladetta.

Ramond left the cardinal in December 1788, when this one was authorized to return to Strasbourg. It settled in Paris and made appear in 1789 its first Observations made in the Pyrenees, to serve as following observations on the Alps . To improve in natural history, it then followed the courses of Jussieu (1748-1836) and Rene Desfontaines (1780-1831) to the Garden of the King.

It also launched out in the policy and was elected in September 1791 appointed of Paris. It belonged to the Club of Breaking into leaf the. It defended in 1792 the refractory priests whose deportation had been voted. Ramond supported the action of passionately Fayette, which tried to alleviate the heats of the Jacobins. Threatened, he preferred to flee Paris in August and took refuge in the Pyrenees. Supervised and regarded as suspect, it settled with Barèges, where it multiplied the geological herborizings and observations. It was stopped in 1794 and was shown to be an enemy of the Révolution. Imprisoned from Tarbes for seven months, he escaped from little from the Guillotine.

He devoted himself then exclusively to the Natural history. He corresponded with Philippe Picot of Lapeyrouse (1744-1818) and various botanists of which Rene Desfontaines, Jean Thore (1762-1823) and Dominique Villars (1745-1814).

Starting from 1796, it taught, as professor of natural history, at the new central School of Tarbes. Its courses met a great success immediately. Become a specialist in botany and geology in the central Pyrenees, it finally could, in 1797, to conclude a project which lived it for a long time : to reach the top of the Mount Lost (3 355 meters) to slice the controversy which opposed it to Dolomieu and Lapeyrouse on the primitive age of limestones of the central chain.

The forwarding, which included/understood about fifteen people, whose Picot of Lapeyrouse and several of its pupils, found many fossils, but did not reach the top. The account of the rise appeared in 1797 under the title of Voyage with Mount-Lost and in the adjacent part of the Hautes-Pyrénées . September 7th of the same year, always accompanied by its pupils whose Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel (1776-1854), Ramond de Carbonnières carried out one second attempt. The administrator and forest Etienne-François Dralet (1760-1844) also took part in this rise. But it is only in 1802 that it reached finally the top. Ramond reported its forwarding in the Journal of Mines (in Thermidor year XI), which was worth to him an unquestionable recognition of the scientists of its time. It corresponded in particular with Rene Just Haüy (1743-1822), Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847), Boudon of Saint-Mercies (1748-1831). He became member of the Academy of Science in January 1802.

After the closing of the central School of Tarbes, in 1800, it returned to Paris as a member of the Constitutional council.

Of 1800 with 1806, it sat at the Parliament and took part in work of the Société of the observers of the man. In 1805, it had married Good-Olympe, widow of the general Louis-Nicolas Chérin, the girl of his friend Good-Joseph Dacier (1742-1833).

Friend of Napoleon, it was named vice-president of the legislative Body, then in 1806, prefect of the Puy-de-Dôme. He spent more time to herborize or making weather statements that to deal with administration. What did not prevent it from being made Baron d' Empire in December 1809.

It made appear in 1815 Nivellement of the Mounts Gild and the Mounts Domes laid out by order of grounds . The same year, he was elected appointed Puy-de-Dôme. In 1818, it was named with the Council of State and did not leave any more the capital but to go in Auvergne. In 1821, it became the summer to Auvergne with Rene Desfontaines and two young naturalists Victor Jacquemont (1801-1832) and the count Hippolyte Jaubert (1798-1874). It published finally, in 1825, On the state of the vegetation at the top of the Peak of the South .

It is buried with the cemetery of Montmartre.

Homages

an endemic Pyrenean, Ramonda Pyrenaica ( Ramondia ), representing isolated from the family of the Gesnériacées and regarded as a vestige of the tertiary flora , was dedicated to him by the botanist Jean Michel Claude Richard (1787-1869).
the pyreneists gave his name to the Soum-with-Ramond (3260 m), in the Massif of Mount-Lost: it is by circumventing this Eastern top of Mount-Lost that the guides of Ramond de Carbonnières carried out the first rise of it, on August 6th, 1802. Itself reached on August 10th that point.
Its name is also given to a top of the Massif of Néouvielle, the Pic Ramougn (3011 m) - Ramougn is the pronociation Gascon of Ramond .
Jean-Baptiste Bory of Saint-Vincent gave its name to a chain of craters (the Puys Ramond) of the Piton of the Furnace with the Meeting: located at the edge of the Enclosed Fouqué, they are very regularly attended by the hikers on the way on an alternative of the GR. R2, path which crosses the Meeting of north to the south, like, each year, by the thousands of runners of the Diagonale of Insane the.
the “Ramond Company” was born in 1865 with Bagnères-with-Bigorre, Pyrenean thermal spa attended by a cultivated elite, impassioned mountain like its founders, Émilien Frossard (1829-1898), Charles Packe (1826-1896) and Henry Russell (1834-1909). She wanted to be distinguished from the traditional academic companies while devoting herself primarily to the ethnographic scientific study and of the Pyrenees and the popularization of acquired knowledge. Ramond de Carbonnières which had excelled in these disciplines and deeply marked the cultural medium bagnérais, imposed itself on all like the best symbol for the new business. The Ramond Company publishes an annual bulletin.

Sources

Benoit Dayrat, Botanists and Flora of France, three centuries of discovered , 2003, scientists Publication of the national Natural history museum of natural history, 690 p.
Henri Béraldi, Hundred years in the Pyrenees , Paris, 1898-1904, seven volumes in-8°. Republications by “the Friends of the Pyrenean Book”, Pau, 1977, then by the “Bookstore of the Pyrenees and Gascogne”, Pau, 2001.

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