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Andre Jean Francois Marie Brochant de Villiers

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Andre Jean Francois Marie BROCHANT DE VILLIERS (1772-1840), French mineralogist and geologist, was born at Villiers, near Nantes, on the 6th of August 1772. After studying at the Ecole Polytechnique, he was in 1794 the first pupil admitted to the Ecole des Mines. In 1804 he was appointed professor of geology and mineralogy in the Ecole des Mines, which had been temporarily transferred to Pezay in Savoy, and he returned with the school to Paris in 1815. Later on he became inspector general of mines and a member of the Academy of Sciences. He investigated the transition strata of the Tarantaise, wrote on the position of the granite rocks of Mont Blanc, and on the lead minerals of Derbyshire and Cumberland. He was charged with the superintendence of the construction of the geological map of France, undertaken by his pupils Dufrenoy and Elie de Beaumont. He died in Paris on the 16th of May 1840. His publications include Traite elementaire de mineralogie (2 vols., 1801-1802; 2nd ed., 1808), and Traite abrege de cristallographie (Paris, 1818).