Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...
- 13 December 1791) was a French botanist, agronomist, metallurgist and administrator.
Life
He was the son of the
goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and servicea ...
Gabriel Tillet and began studying metals at his father's workshop. In 1740 he was appointed Director of the Mint at Troyes. Ten years later he published his first book, about
alloy
An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductilit ...
s. In 1750, he was awarded a prize by the Academy of Bordeaux for his research concerning the plagues of cereals, especially wheat. In 1755, he published the results of his research as ''Dissertation sur la cause qui corrompt et noircit les grains de blé dans les épis; et sur les moyens de prévenir ces accidents'' (''Explanation of the cause that corrupts and blackens the grains of wheat in the
ears
An ear is the organ that enables hearing and, in mammals, body balance using the vestibular system. In mammals, the ear is usually described as having three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear consists o ...
; and the means to prevent these accidents''), and was awarded another prize for it. The fungus '' Tilletia tritici'', which he describes in this work, was named after him a century later by Charles and Louis Tulasne. In 1756 he resigned from his post at the Mint at Troyes and moved to Paris, living on Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame.
On 9 September 1758, he was admitted to the French Academy of Sciences as a botanist. He occupied several offices at the Academy over the next decades, finally becoming Treasurer in 1788, after the death of his predecessor Buffon.
In 1760 and 1761 he traveled around the
Angoumois
Angoumois (), historically the County of Angoulême, was a county and province of France, originally inferior to the parent duchy of Aquitaine, similar to the Périgord to its east but lower and generally less forested, equally with occasional vin ...
, researching yet another cereal plague together with his friend and fellow agronomist
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (20 July 1700, Paris13 August 1782, Paris), was a French physician, naval engineer and botanist.
Biography
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau was born in Paris in 1700, the son of Alexandre Duhamel, lord of Denai ...
. The result of this was the book ''Histoire d'un insecte qui devore les grains de l'Angoumois'' (''History of an Insect that Devours the Grains of the Angoumois'', published by H. L. Guérin & L. F. Delatour, Paris, 1762).
In 1766 he was charged with the making of 24 copies of the Toise de l'Academie, the official measuring unit of length in the Kingdom of France, and their distribution to the main French cities of the time.
In 1767 he was appointed Inspector-General of the
Mint
MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...
, a post he held until 1774 when he was succeeded by the Marquis de Condorcet. In 1773 he became a Knight of the
Order of Saint Michael
, status = Abolished by decree of Louis XVI on 20 June 1790Reestablished by Louis XVIII on 16 November 1816Abolished in 1830 after the July RevolutionRecognised as a dynastic order of chivalry by the ICOC
, founder = Louis XI of France
, h ...
.
In 1784 he became the General Administrator of the Salpêtrière. It was during his administration that the Comtesse de la Motte was imprisoned there for her participation in the
Affair of the diamond necklace
The Affair of the Diamond Necklace (, "Affair of the Queen's Necklace") was an incident from 1784 to 1785 at the court of King Louis XVI of France that involved his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette.
The Queen's reputation, already tarnished by gossi ...
, and escaped.
He was a member of commissions of the Academy of Sciences appointed in 1790 to advise the National Constituent Assembly on a new currency and on new weights and measures. He, with
Jean-Charles de Borda
Jean-Charles, chevalier de Borda (4 May 1733 – 19 February 1799) was a French mathematician, physicist, and Navy officer.
Biography
Borda was born in the city of Dax to Jean‐Antoine de Borda and Jeanne‐Marie Thérèse de Lacroix.
In 17 ...
,
Joseph Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi LagrangiaAntoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (
Marquis de Condorcet presented a report on 27 October 1790 advising that weights and measures, as well as currency, adopt decimal divisions.
In 1847 botanists Edmond Tulasne and
Charles Tulasne
Charles Tulasne (5 September 1816 – 28 August 1884) was a French physician, mycologist and illustrator born in Langeais in the département of Indre-et-Loire.
He received his medical doctorate in 1840 and practiced medicine in Paris until 18 ...
circumscribed
In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius.
Not every polyg ...
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
of
smut fungi
The smuts are multicellular fungi characterized by their large numbers of teliospores. The smuts get their name from a Germanic word for dirt because of their dark, thick-walled, and dust-like teliospores. They are mostly Ustilaginomycetes (phylum ...
in the Tilletiaceae family and is named in Tillet's honour.
References
Sources
*
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Alexander Lernet-Holenia (21 October 1897, in Vienna — 3 July 1976) was an Austrian poet, novelist, dramaturgist and writer of screenplays and historical studies who produced a heterogeneous literary opus that included poetry, psychological ...
: ''Das Halsband der Königin'' (''The Queen's Necklace'',
Paul Zsolnay Verlag
Paul Zsolnay Verlag is an Austrian publishing company.
Overview
The company was created in 1923 by Paul Zsolnay.Hall, Murray G.: “Publishers and Institutions in Austria, 1918–45”, pp. 79–80. ''A History of Austrian Literature 1918–2000' ...