Requien spirit

Esprit Requien is a Naturaliste French, born in 1788 with Avignon and died in 1851 with Bonifacio. Eminent Botanist, Paleontologist and Malacologue, it was one of the most famous naturalists of the 19th century and undoubtedly the most famous scientist inhabitant of Avignon.

Wire of a tanner whose workshop was at the ground floor of the street of the Shade (today street Cassan), Esprit passed there most of its life. It is devoted very early to botany, carries out the first botanical inventory of the Corsica and constitutes an herbarium which acquires an international repute quickly. Regarded as the fifth of France, it remains still a reference impossible to circumvent today.

Precursor of the Phytosociology, Requien describes the vegetation of the Mont Ventoux and occupies Botanical garden very actively. It is at the origin of discovered many Taxon S and constitutes an important collection of reference, which it bequeaths in 1840 to the administration of the Musée Calvet: a rich herbarium of 300.000 samples and a great Fossil number of S, crystals, empaillés animals, as well as the specimens collected with Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), which will be preserving museum of 1866 to 1873. It will give rise to the museum of natural history of Avignon, which bears from now on its name and which is installed, since 1940, in the hotel of Raphélis de Soissans (XVIIIe S.), street Joseph Vernet.

Like his/her friend Jean-Henri Fabre, Esprit Requien was eclectic, being interested in the near total of the world of sciences, in particular in the Paléontologie and the Malacologie, for which it brings together rich person collections.

Appointed inspector of the historic buildings, he was opposed, with his friend Prosper Mérimée, with the destruction of the ramparts of Avignon.

He is buried with the Cimetière Saint-Véran of Avignon.

External bonds

Requien museum in Avignon

Foundation-calvet

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