The Société de Géographie (French, "Geographical Society"), is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 (the first of all).[1] Since 1878, its headquarters has been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gigantic caryatids representing Land and Sea. It was here, in 1879, that the construction of the Panama Canal was decided.
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The Geographical Society 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 was the location of the Arab Congress of 1913, which took place from June 18 to June 23 of that year and marked the confluence of events surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the beginnings of Arab nationalism, and early Arab reaction to Zionist immigration to Palestine.
The Society's revue has appeared monthly since 1822, 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.