Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck

Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck was a Belgian paleontologist and chemist born May 3, 1809, in Leuven, Belgium, who died July 16, 1887, and who studied medicine at the State University of Leuven, became a chemical assistant in 1831, pursued advanced chemistry in Paris, Berlin and Giessen, taught in Ghent and Liege, and secured a professorship in chemistry at the University of Liege in 1856, adding the title of professor of paleontology there in 1876. Beginning around 1835 he devoted his leisure to the Carboniferous fossils around Liege, becoming renowned for describing Paleozoic molluscs, brachiopods, crustaceans and crinoids from Belgian limestone deposits, and he published Description des animaux fossiles qui se trouvent dans le terrain Carbonifere de Belgique between 1842 and 1844, with a supplement in 1851, and Recherches sur les animaux fossiles in 1847 and 1873, alongside the earlier Elements de chimie inorganique of 1839. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1882, received the Clarke Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1886, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1875.