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 (, , ; or , ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the Communes of France, commune had a ...
in 1795. He was posthumous son of
Antoine Polier
Colonel Antoine-Louis Henri de Polier (1741–1795) was a Swiss adventurer, art collector, military engineer and soldier who made his fortune in India in the eighteenth century. He was the father of Count Adolphe de Polier.
Life
Image:PolierMar ...
, 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; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
he organised several scientific expeditions. In 1829, he accompanied
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...
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 th ...
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. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...
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 (, , ) 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 ''Parkola'', a Karelian placename. Its population in 2010 was ...
near Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
in a vault commissioned from Alexander Brullov
Alexander Pavlovich Brullov, sometimes Brulloff (Brulleau until 1822; ; 29 November 1798 – 9 January 1877), was a Russian artist associated with Russian Neoclassicism.
Early life
Alexander Brullov was born in Saint Petersburg into a family ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polier, Adolphe de
1795 births
1830 deaths
People from Avignon
Expatriates in the Russian Empire
French Army officers
French geologists