Émile Licent (1876–1952; with the adopted Chinese name, 桑志华, while he was working in China) was a French

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

trained as a natural historian. He spent more than twenty-five years researching in

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

. His expeditions spread across various parts of Northern and Central China (including the provinces of

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, an ...

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-lev ...

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see #Name, § Name) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichu ...

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

and eastern part of the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...

). Upon his first arrival at Tianjin in 1914, he established the

Musée Hoangho Paiho The Musée Hoangho Paiho () was a museum of natural history and fossils founded by the French Jesuit Émile Licent (1876–1952) in Tianjin, China, in 1914. Also known as the Beijiang Museum, it is now part of the Tianjin Natural History Museum. ...

(it was known as the 'Beijiang Museum' among the Chinese), one of the earliest of its kind in China. The Museum survived the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and changed its name to

Tianjin Natural History Museum Tianjin Natural History Natural history museum, Museum is in Tianjin, China, and is located in No. 206 Machang Avenue, in the Hexi District, Tianjin, Hexi District. It was founded in 1914 as the Hoangho Paiho Museum. The museum has three floors an ...

(TMNH) in 1952. He was a colleague of

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( (); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philos ...

in conducting archeological research in northern provinces of China in the 1920s. He and Chardin were the first to examine the Shuidonggou (水洞沟) (

Ordos Ordos may refer to: Inner Mongolia *Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China ** Ordos Ejin Horo Airport * Ordos Loop of the Yellow River, a region of China **Ordos Plateau or "the Ordos", land enclosed by Ordos Loop *Ordos Desert, in Inner Mongolia *Ordos ...

Upland,

) archaeological site in northern China. Resent analysis of flaked stone artifacts from the most recent (1980) excavation at this site has identified an assemblage which constitutes the southernmost occurrence of an Initial Upper Paleolithic blade technology proposed to have originated in the Altai region of Southern Siberia. The lowest levels of the site are now dated from 40,000 to 25,000 years ago. He left China during the Second World War in 1939 after appointing one of his colleagues, Pierre Leroy (adopted Chinese name, 罗学宾), as Deputy Director of the Museum. Most of the

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...

mammal fossils and prehistoric human relics and tools that he and his colleagues discovered remain in the Museum. He was awarded an Order (铁十字骑士勋章) by the French government for his pioneering scientific works and explorations in China. Nothing much is known about his life or religious activities in France before and after his stay in China.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Licent, Emile 1876 births 1952 deaths French naturalists 20th-century French Jesuits Members of the French Academy of Sciences Jesuit scientists Presidents of the Société entomologique de France