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Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard

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Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard
Born2 April 1720
Died28 November 1785(1785-11-28) (aged 65)
Paris
Occupation(s)Lawyer
Naturalist
SpouseElisabeth Potot de Montbeillard

Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard also Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard (2 April 1720 – 28 November 1785[1]) was an eighteenth-century French lawyer, writer, naturalist, and contributor to the Encyclopédie.

Biography

The son of the aristocratic lawyer and member of parlement François Marie Guéneau (1686-1742) and his wife Marie Colombe Meney (1685-1768), Philippe first studied in Paris from 1732 to 1734 at the Collège de Navarre and the Collège d'Harcourt and then in 1735 at the Collège of the Oratory in Troyes. He studied law in Dijon at the Faculty of Law.[2] He had an older brother, François Guéneau (1717-1788), and a younger sister, Charlotte Guéneau (born about 1722).[3]

In 1742 he became a lawyer. He later lived for around a decade in Paris, where he befriended Denis Diderot, a co-editor of the Encyclopédie. Gueneau contributed a single article to that work, "Étendue", a philosophical treatment of the notion of extension.[4]

In 1755 Guéneau returned to Semur-en-Auxois. There he married Elisabeth de Potot Montbeillard on 23 November 1756 with whom he had a son, François Guéneau de Montbeillard (1759-1847), who took on a military career as a "capitaine de la cavalerie."[5] In 1766 Gueneau became famous for having his son inoculated against smallpox, a controversial procedure at the time.[6]

At the request of the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Guéneau became a contributor to the Histoire naturelle, générale et particuliére, avec la description du cabinet du roy.[7]

In 1764 he was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de Dijon

Works (selection)

References

  1. ^ Biographie universelle; ou, Dictionnaire histoirique, contenant la nécrologie des hommes célèbres de tous les pays, des articles consacrés a l'histoire générale des peuples aux batailles memorables, aux grands evénements politiques, aux diverses sectes religieuses, etc., etc.; depuis le commencement du monde jusqu'a nos jours, vol. 3 (Paris: Furne, 1838) 112–113.
  2. ^ Genealogy of the Family.
  3. ^ Thesaurus, Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL)
  4. ^ Frank A. Kafker and Serena L. Kafker, The Encyclopedists as Individuals: A Biographical Dictionary of the Authors of the Encyclopédie (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1988), 167.
  5. ^ Genealogy his wife
  6. ^ Kafker and Kafker, Encyclopedists as Individuals, 168.
  7. ^ Biographie universelle et ancienne et moderne : histoire par ordre alphabétique de la vie publique et privée de tous les hommes qui se sont fait remarquer par leurs écrits, leurs actions, leurs vertus ou leurs crimes. Philibert Gueneau de Montbeillard (1720−1785)

Bibliography

  • E. C. Spary; Emma C. Spary: Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution. University of Chicago Press (2000) ISBN 0-226-76863-5
  • G. Roth: Un ami de Diderot: Guéneau de Montbeillard. Mercure de France, January 1960, (p. 71–91)