Jean-Baptiste Elie de Beaumont

Jean-Baptiste Armand Louis Leonce Elie de Beaumont was a French geologist born September 25, 1798, in Canon, Calvados, France, who died September 21, 1874, in the same town, and who graduated first in his class from the Ecole polytechnique in 1819 before studying at the Ecole des mines, later succeeding Georges Cuvier in the chair of natural history at the College de France in 1832 and becoming professor of geology at the Ecole des Mines in 1835. He served as engineer in chief of mines in France from 1833 to 1847, was appointed inspector general of mines in 1847, was named a senator of France in 1852, and became perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences after the death of Francois Arago in 1853. He led preparation of France national geological map and developed an influential, if later superseded, theory that mountain systems arose from episodes of the earth cooling and shrinking, arranged along a pattern of intersecting circles. He received the Wollaston Medal in 1843 jointly with Pierre Armand Dufrenoy, and Mount Elie de Beaumont in New Zealand is named in his honor.