Abstract
THE Belgian geologist Alphonse Francois Renard, who with Murray reported on the rock deposits from the bottom of the sea collected by the “Challenger” expedition, was born at Renaix in East Flanders on September 27, 1842. Educated at Rome for the Church, during 1866-69 he was superintendent at the College de la Paix at Namur, and then entered the Jesuit College at the old abbey of Maria Laach in the Eifel. Taking up the study of geology and chemistry, in 1874 he was made professor of those subjects at the College of the Belgian Jesuits at Louvain and a few years later was made a curator of the Royal Natural History Museum at Brussels. Though ordained a priest in 1877, he abandoned his intention of entering the Society of Jesus and separated from Rome, resigned his post at Louvain in 1882 and in 1888 was appointed professor of geology in the University of Ghent, a post he held until his death. In conjunction with Vallèe-Poussin (1827-1904) he wrote on the plutonic rocks of Belgium. The Geological Society in 1885 awarded him the Bigsby Medal. He died at Brussels on July 9, 1903.
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Alphonse Francois Renard (1842 -1903). Nature 150, 372 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150372b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150372b0