Count Adolphe de Polier
(1795 – 1830) was a French officer in the service of the Russian Empire. He is remembered as the man who found Russia's first diamonds.
Life
Polier was born in
Avignon
Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...
in 1795. He was posthumous son of
Antoine Polier, an engineer who had made a fortune in India and then returned in time to be called an aristocrat during the French revolution. His father was killed leaving a pregnant widow and a son.
In 1812 Polier joined the French cavalry. He then worked for the French General Staff.
Adolphe married Princess
Varvara Shakhovskaya (1796–1870), one of Russia's richest women, in 1826. The following year he entered the Russian service as Chamberlain of Emperor Nicholas I. He also served as vice-minister of Finance. As a member of the
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
he organised several scientific expeditions. In 1829, he accompanied
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, p ...
to the
Ural region to some land that was owned by his wife.
[ Whilst Humboldt found gold and platinum but he was convinced that there should be diamonds but the closest he found was ]Zircon
Zircon () is a mineral belonging to the group of nesosilicates and is a source of the metal zirconium. Its chemical name is zirconium(IV) silicate, and its corresponding chemical formula is Zr SiO4. An empirical formula showing some of the r ...
s. Polier went off on his own and after four days a local 14 year old peasant boy showed him a diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
he had discovered.[ Humboldt complimented Polier on his mineralogy.][ Soon they had three diamonds and Polier presented Humboldt with a present of one weighing half a carat.]Pargolovo Pargolovo (russian: Па́рголово, fi, Parkala, german: Pargola) is a municipal settlement in the Vyborgsky District of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Until the late 20th century, it was the city's northern suburb. The name derives from ''Parko ...
near Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
in a vault commissioned from Alexander Brullov
Alexander Pavlovich Brullov (, spelled Brulleau until 1822, when the family name was changed according to Russian pronunciation, sometimes also spelled Brulloff; 29 November 1798 – 9 January 1877) was a Russian artist associated with Russian ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polier, Adolphe de
1795 births
1830 deaths
People from Avignon
French Army officers
French geologists