| Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau | |
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Engraving of Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau by François-Hubert Drouais. He is shown working on his Éléments d’architecture navale , his most famous work. On the shelf behind him, one can see a copy of his Traité des forêts.
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| Born | 20 July 1700 Paris |
| Died | 13 August 1782 (aged 82) Paris |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Botany |
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (20 July 1700, Paris - 13 August 1782, Paris), was a French physician, naval engineer and botanist. As a botanist his standard abbreviation is Duhamel[1]. Elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1738, he served three times as its president, and left an important body of scientific work in such diverse fields as the construction and service of ships, fishing, the cultivation and storage of wheat, and silviculture. Named Inspector-General of the Marine in 1739, in 1741 he created a school of Marine science which in 1765 became the Ecole des Ingénieurs-Constructeurs, the forerunner of the modern Ecole du Génie Maritime. Following the work of Réaumur, in 1757 he released the Description des Arts et Métiers and opposed the writers of the Encyclopédie. His fondness for concrete problems, experimentation and popularization made him one of the forerunners of modern agronomy and silviculture.
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Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau was born in Paris in 1700, the son of Alexandre Duhamel, lord of Denainvilliers.
Having been requested by the French 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. This achievement gained him admission to the French Academy of Sciences in 1738. From then on 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 on he made meteorological observations, and kept records of the influence of the weather on agricultural production. For many years he was inspector-general of the 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 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.
In 1767, du Monceau was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
He died in Paris on 13 August 1782.
His works are nearly ninety in number and include many technical handbooks. The principal are:
and