Conrad Malte-Brun

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Conrad Malte-Brun.
Conrad Malte-Brun.

Conrad Malte-Brun, born Malthe-Conrad Bruun (August 12, 1755–December 14, 1826), was a Danish-French geographer and journalist. His second son, Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun, was also a geographer.

[edit] Biography

Born in Thisted to an administrator of Danish crown lands, Malte-Brun was destined for a career as a pastor, but chose instead to attend classes at the University of Copenhagen, and became a supporter of the French Revolution and an activist in favor of freedom of the press. He left the country and settled first in Sweden, and then in the Free City of Hamburg.

Malte-Brun arrived in France in November 1799, and began work on a geography treatise meant as a gift to his adoptive country. This was accomplished with the help of Edme Mentelle, a professor at the École Normale; together, they produced Géographie mathématique, physique et politique de toutes les parties du monde (6 vols., published between 1803 and 1807).

A regular contributor Journal des Débats, he was also the founder of Les Annales des Voyages (in 1807) and Les Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie et de l'Histoire (in 1819), which encouraged observations and reports as a basis for research. He became well-known after contributing Tableau de la Pologne, a treatise on the geography of Poland (in 1807, as the First Empire troops established French tutelage in the region). In 1822-1824, he served as the first general secretary of the newly-founded Société de Géographie.

He died in Paris in 1826, as he was drafting the final version of his major work, the Précis de Géographie Universelle ou Description de toutes les parties du monde. His name was given to a street in both Paris (XXe arrondissement) and Thisted.

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