Jean de Charpentier or Johann von Charpentier (8 December 1786 – 12 December 1855) was a German-Swiss
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and History of Earth, history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the Field research, ...
who studied Swiss
glacier
A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...
s. He was born in
Freiberg
Freiberg () is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany, with around 41,000 inhabitants. The city lies in the foreland of the Ore Mountains, in the Saxon urbanization axis, which runs along the northern edge of the Elster and ...
,
Electorate of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony ( or ), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356 to 1806 initially centred on Wittenberg that came to include areas around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. It was a ...
,
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
and died in
Bex,
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
Life
After following in his father's footsteps as a mining engineer he excelled in his field while working in the copper mines in the Pyrénées and salt mines in western Switzerland.
In 1818 a catastrophic event changed his life focus when an ice-dammed lake in the
Val de Bagnes above
Martigny
Martigny (; , ; ) is the capital city of the district of Martigny (district), Martigny, cantons of Switzerland, canton of Canton of Valais, Valais, Switzerland. It lies at an elevation of , and its population is approximately 20,000 inhabitants ( ...
broke through its barrier, causing many deaths. Afterwards, he made extensive field studies in the Alps. Using evidence of erratic boulders and moraines and drawing on the works of
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
,
he hypothesized that Swiss glaciers had once been much more extensive. These boulders, characteristic of glaciers, were strewn as if they were
brought there by glaciers that no longer existed. Even so, he wasn't sure how glaciers first formed, moved, or how they disappeared. His ideas were later taken up and developed by
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...
.
upright 1.5, center, Carte Géologique des Pyrénées
Legacy
The glacier of
Charpentierbreen in
Nathorst Land at
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...
,
Svalbard
Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...
is named after him.
See also
*
Ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...
Bibliography
* Tobias Krüger, "Auf dem Weg zu einem neuen Verständnis der Klimageschichte: der Alpenraum und die Anfänge der Eiszeitforschung" ''Blätter aus der Walliser Geschichte (Geschichtsforschender Verein Oberwallis)'', XLI, Brig 2009, pp. 123–160.
* Tobias Krüger, "Discovering the ice ages : international reception and consequences for a historical understanding of climate", in ''History of science and medicine library''; vol. 37, Leiden 2013, (cloth) ; (electronic bk.) (pp. 148–154, 162–163, 167–168, 177–178, 186–188).
* Tobias Krüger, "À l'aube de l'âge de glace. Jean de Charpentier pionnier tragique d'une révolution scientifique", in Patrick Kupper, C. Bernhard Schär (ed.) ''Les Naturalistes. A la découverte de la Suisse et du monde (1800-2015)'', Baden, Hier und Jetzt 2015, , pp. 17–33.
References
*
Karl Alfred von Zittel, (
Maria M. Ogilvie Gordon, tr.), ''History of Geology and Palæontology to the End of the Nineteenth Century'' (1901).
External links
* Pictures and texts o
''Essai sur les glaciers et sur le terrain erratique du bassin du Rhône'' by Jean de Charpentier can be found in the database VIATIMAGES
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charpentier, Jean De
1786 births
1855 deaths
19th-century German geologists
19th-century Swiss geologists
18th-century German geologists