Société de Géographie

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The Société de Géographie, Paris, is the world's oldest geographical society.^[1] It was founded at a meeting, 15 December 1821, in the Paris Hôtel de Ville and among its 217 founders were some of the greatest scientific names of the time: Pierre-Simon Laplace, the Society's first president; Georges Cuvier, Charles Pierre Chapsal, Vivant Denon, Joseph Fourier, Gay-Lussac, Claude Louis Berthollet, Alexander von Humboldt, Champollion, François-René de Chateaubriand among them. Most of those men who had accompanied Bonaparte in his Egyptian expedition were members: Edmé François Jomard, Conrad Malte-Brun, Jules Dumont d'Urville, Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert, Hottinguer, Henri Didot, Bottin and others.

The Society's revue has appeared since 1822, monthly, as Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (1822-1899)—offering in octavo format early news of all the discoveries of the nineteenth century—or quarterly, as La Géographie, with a break in 1940-46. Since 1947 the Society's magazine has appeared three times a year, as Acta Geographica. The Society's library, map collection and photograph collection are among the world's most comprehensive and deepest.

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^ Other geographic societies were soon founded: Berlin (1828), London (1830), Frankfort (1836), St-Petersburg (1845), New York (1852), Vienna (1856), Geneva (1858), Mexico City (1859).