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Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (July 20, 1700 Paris - August 13, 1782, Paris), was a French naval engineer and botanist. He was involved in the foundation of the "Académie de marine de Brest", on 31 July 1752, and published Les éléments d'architecture navale ("Elements of naval architecture"). Additional recommended knowledge
Early lifeHenri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau was born in Paris in 1700 the son of Alexandre Duhamel, lord of Denainvilliers. CareerHaving been requested by the Academy of Sciences to investigate a disease which was destroying the saffron plant in Gâtinais, he discovered the cause in a parasitical fungus which attached itself to the roots, and this achievement gained him admission to the French Academy of Sciences in 1728. From then until his death he busied himself chiefly with making experiments in plant physiology. Having learned from Sir Hans Sloane that madder possesses the property of giving colour to the bones, he fed animals successively on food mixed and unmixed with madder; and he found that their bones in general exhibited concentric strata of red and white, while the softer parts showed in the meantime signs of having been progressively extended. From a number of experiments he was led to believe himself able to explain the growth of bones, and to demonstrate a parallel between the manner of their growth and that of trees. Along with the naturalist Buffon, he made numerous experiments on the growth and strength of wood, and experimented also on the growth of the mistletoe, on layer planting, on smut in corn, and others. He was probably the first, in 1736, to distinguish clearly between the alkalis, potash and soda. From the year 1740 he made meteorological observations, and kept records of the influence of the weather on agricultural production. For many years he was inspector-general of marine, and applied his scientific experience to the improvement of naval construction. He was involved in the foundation of the "Académie de marine de Brest", on the 31 July 1752. In his additions to l’”Art de l’Epinglier” - The Art of the Pin-Maker - (1761), Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau wrote about the "division of labour":
This text is believed to have inspired Adam Smith for his famous work "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" published in 1776. He died in Paris on 13 August 1782. BooksHis works are nearly ninety in number and include many technical handbooks. The principal are:
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Henri-Louis_Duhamel_du_Monceau". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |