Ami Boué (16 March 179421 November 1881) was a

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althoug ...

of French Huguenot origin. Born at

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

he trained in Edinburgh and across Europe. He travelled across Europe, studying geology, as well as ethnology, and is considered to be among the first to produce a geological map of the world.

Career

Boué was born in Hamburg where his grandfather Jacques Chapeaurouge had settled in 1705 and established a shipping company which grew. Born in a wealthy home, Boué studied in Hamburg and Geneva before going to study medicine at

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

from 1814 to 1817. Here he came under the influence of

Robert Jameson Robert Jameson Robert Jameson FRS FRSE (11 July 1774 – 19 April 1854) was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist. As Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, developing his predecessor John ...

, whose teachings in geology and mineralogy inspired his future career. Boué was thus led to make geological expeditions to various parts of

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

and

the Hebrides The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebri ...

, and after taking his degree of M.D. in 1817 he settled for some years in Paris. In 1820 he issued his ''Essai géologique sur l'Écosse'', in which the eruptive rocks in particular were carefully described. He travelled much in Germany, Austria and southern Europe, studying various geological formations, and becoming one of the pioneers in geological research; he was one of the founders of the

Société Géologique de France Lactalis is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier SA. Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the sec ...

in 1830, and was its president in 1835. Boué married Eleonore Beinstingel in 1826 and lived for sometime in Berne and then at Vöslau. In 1841 he settled in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, and became naturalized as an Austrian. To the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna he communicated important papers on the geology of the Balkan States (1859–1870), and he also published ''Mémoires géologiques et paléontologiques'' (Paris, 1832) and ''La Turquie d'Europe; observations sur la geographie, la géologie, l'histoire naturelle'', etc. (Paris, 1840).This work was published in German under the title -- ''Die europäische T'ürkei'' -- in 1890. He was a correspondent of the Serbian Learned Society. In 1849 he published the first ethnological map of the Balkan Peninsula.

Evolution

Boué was an advocate of

transmutation of species Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used ...

. He was influenced by the evolutionary views of

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories ...

and

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolo ...

.Corsi, Pietro. (2012). ''The Revolutions of Evolution: Geoffroy and Lamarck, 1825-1840''. ''Bulletin du Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique de Monaco'' 51: 97–122. He was supportive of

spontaneous generation Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized that certain forms, such as fleas, could arise f ...

and argued that spontaneously generated organisms existed at the microscopic level between animals and plants.

Honours

Ami Boué Bluff on

Graham Land Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee an ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

and streets in Budapest, Varna, Vienna and

Sofia Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and h ...

are named after him. File:Улица Ами БУЕ.jpg, A view of Ami Boué Street in

, Bulgaria () File:Ethnographic map Ami Boué, 1847.jpg, Ethnographic map of the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

in 1847 from Ami Boue. File:Ami Boue 1850 geology.jpg, Geology of the world (1850) File:A Portrait of Ami Boué, SUMPHG.jpg, A Portrait of Ami Boué, unknown artist at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" Museum of Paleontology and Historical Geology

References

External links

* * * * * *
Works by Boué, Ami at the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Boue, Ami 1794 births 1881 deaths Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Austrian ethnographers 19th-century Austrian geologists Scientists from Hamburg Presidents of Société géologique de France Proto-evolutionary biologists Wollaston Medal winners