Louis-Constant Prévost(4 June 1787 – 14 August 1856) was a Frenchgeologist.
Early life and education
editPrévost was born in Paris to Louis Prévost, atax farmer,receiver of therentesof Paris.[1]He was educated there at the Central Schools, where, inspired by the lectures ofGeorges Cuvier,his particular mentorAlexandre Brongniart,andAndré Marie Constant Duméril,he determined to devote himself to natural science. He took his degree in Letters and Sciences in 1811, and for a time pursued the study of medicine and anatomy.[2][3]
Career
editMainly through the influence of Brongniart he turned his attention togeology.During the years 1816 to 1819 he took advantage of the necessity of accompanying his associate Philippe de Girard, who was seeking out a site for establishing a textile mill near Vienna, by making a special study of theViennese Basin.In doing so, he pointed out for the first time the presence ofTertiarystrata like those of theParis Basin,but which included a series of later date. His next work (1821) was an essay on the geology of parts ofNormandy,with special reference to the "Secondary" —orMesozoic— strata, which he compared with those of southernEngland;[3]in this he had the collaboration ofCharles Lyell.
From 1821-1829 he was professor of geology at theAthenaeumat Paris,[4]and he took a leading part withAmi Boue,Gérard Paul DeshayesandJules Desnoyersin the founding of theSociété géologique de France(1830). In 1831 he became assistant professor and afterwards honorary professor of geology to the faculty of sciences of theSorbonne.[3]He was on hand with an artist to witness the undersea volcano that producedFerdinandea(now Graham Bank) off the south coast of Sicily that July; he named itÎle Julia,for its July appearance, and reported in theBulletin de la Société Géologique de France[5]In 1848 he was elected to his late mentor Brogniart's seat in theAcadémie des sciences
Having studied thevolcanoesofItalyandAuvergne,he opposed the views ofChristian Leopold von Buchregarding craters of elevation, maintaining that the cones were due to the material successively erupted. Like Lyell he advocated a study of the slow and incessant forces in action at present, in order to illustrate the past, the principle in geology calleduniformitarianism,discountingcatastrophic events.One of his more important memoirs wasDe la Chronologie des terrains et du synchronisme des formations(1845),[3]in which he expounded the principle of the synchronicity of successive stages of igneous and sedimentary deposition across wide terrains. His most general titles wereDocuments pour l'histoire des terrains tertiaires(Paris, 1827) and hisTraité de géographie physiqueco-authored with E. Bassano (Paris, 1836).
Notes
edit- ^"Constant Prevost - Encyclopedia".theodora.Retrieved2019-12-17.
- ^Dezos de La Roquette, Jean-Bernard-Marie-Alexandre (1856).Notice nécrologique sur M. Constant Prévost, membre de l'Académie des sciences.Paris: L. Martinet.
- ^abcdChisholm 1911.
- ^Annales de la Société géologique du Nord.Vol. 25. 1896. p. 11.
- ^"Notes sur l’ile Julia pour servir a l’histoire de la formation des montagnes volcaniques" inMémoires de la Soc. Géol. de France,1835 ("L’exploration de île Julia"Archived2006-05-01 at theWayback MachineandGeological Society, "From out the azure main" 31 January 2003Archived20 April 2006 at theWayback Machine)
References
edit- This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Prévost, Constant".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 312.
- Imago Mundi: Constant Prévost
- K.B. Bork, "Constant Prevost (1787-1856):The life and contributions of a French uniformitarian",Journal of Geoscience Education38pp 21–27
- National Maritime Museum: Graham Island (now the Graham Shoal)
