Abstract
On Jan. 26 occurred the bicentenary of the birth of the eminent French mineralogist and civil engineer, GabrielJars, the author of “Voyages metallurgiques”, which at the time of its publication was a cyclopædia of information on mining in Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century. The son of a miner, Jars was born at Lyons and became one of the earliest students of the æcole des Fonts et Chaussées, which had been founded in 1747 for the training of engineers for the Government service. Having gained both practical and theoretical knowledge of the art of mining, he was sent in 1757 with Duhamel du Moriceau to visit the mines of Europe, with the view of the introduction of improvements into the mines of France. His first tour took him through the central countries of Europe, but afterwards he visited England and Scotland, and the Netherlands and Scandinavia. In 1768 he was admitted a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and he was arranging the accounts of his journeys when he suddenly died of sunstroke. His death took place at Clermont on Aug. 20, 1769, when he was only thirty-seven years of age. His brother had accompanied him on his later journeys, and to him fell the task of publishing the “Voyages mêtallurgiques”, which appeared in three volumes during the years 1774-81.
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Bicentenary of Gabriel Jars. Nature 129, 160 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129160a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129160a0