Pierre Armand Dufrenoy

Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrenoy, known as Pierre Armand Dufrenoy, was a French geologist, mineralogist and engineer born September 5, 1792, in Sevran, France, who died March 20, 1857, in Paris, and who trained at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines before becoming professor of mineralogy, and later director, at the Ecole des Mines, professor of geology at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, and, from 1847, holder of the chair of mineralogy at the Museum national d histoire naturelle. Working alongside Elie de Beaumont, he spent thirteen years of fieldwork producing a major geological map of France published between 1841 and 1848, with a third volume following in 1873, and he also published a comprehensive three volume treatise on mineralogy with atlas between 1844 and 1845. He served as inspector general of mines, was a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor. He received the Wollaston Medal in 1843 jointly with Elie de Beaumont, and the mineral dufrenoysite was named in his honor in 1845.