Charles Walckenaer

Baron Charles Walckenaer
Born	(1771-12-25)25 December 1771 Paris
Died	28 April 1852(1852-04-28) (aged 80) Paris
Education	University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, École polytechnique
Known for	Biographies of La Fontaine and others
Parents	Illegitimate son of Charles-Nicolas Duclos du Fresnoy (father) Anne Pajot de Villeperrot (mother)
Scientific career
Fields	Arachnology, entomology
Institutions	Royal Library of France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
Author abbrev. (zoology)	Walckenaer

Baron Charles Athanase Walckenaer (25 December 1771 – 28 April 1852) was a French civil servant and scientist.

Biography

Walckenaer was born in Paris and studied at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow. In 1793 he was appointed head of the military transports in the Pyrenees, after which he pursued technical studies at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the École polytechnique. He was elected member of the Institut de France in 1813, was mayor (maire) in the 5th arrondissement in Paris and secretary-general of the prefect of the Seine 1816–1825. He was made a baron in 1823.

In 1839 he was appointed conservator for the Department of Maps at the Royal Library in Paris and in 1840 secretary for life in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He was one of the founders of the Société entomologique de France in 1832, and a "resident member" of the Société des observateurs de l'homme.

Walckenaer introduced the full biography according to the English model into French literature through his works Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de la Fontaine (1820, 4th ed. 1858), Histoire de la vie et des poésies d'Horace (1840; new ed. 1858) and Mémoires touchent la vie et les écrits de Mme de Sevigné (6 volumes, 1842–1865). In the works of La Bruyère, which he published in 1845, he returned to the original text.

In the area of geography, he discovered the map of Juan de la Cosa, the oldest extant map that shows the American continent, and published La monde maritime (4 vols., 1818), Histoire générale des voyages (21 vols., 1826–1831) and Géographie ancienne, historique et comparée des Gaules (3 vols., 1839, new ed. 1862). He was also an entomologist and arachnologist who published, among other things, the Histoire naturelle des insectes (4 vols., 1836–1847) together with Paul Gervais. He was also the scientist who transferred the black widow to its current genus and discovered multiple species of Cyclosa, including C. turbinata.

External links

• Google Books Digital Version of Apteres Histoire naturelle des insectes
• Works by or about Charles Walckenaer at Internet Archive
• Spider Drawings by John Abbot [1]^{[permanent dead link]}

This page was last edited on 27 March 2024, at 04:30