RENARD, ALPHONSE FRANCOIS (1842-1903)

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 96 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RAY-RHU

RENARD, ALPHONSE FRANCOIS (1842-1903) , Belgian geologist and petrographer, was born at Renaix, in Eastern Flanders, on the 27th of September 1842. He was educated for the church of Rome, and from 1866 to 1869 he was superintendent at the College de la Paix, Namur. In 1870 he entered the Jesuit Training College at the old abbey of Maria Laach in the

Eifel

EIFEL

, and there, while engaged in studying philosophy and science, he became interested in the geology of the

district

DISTRICT

, and especially in the volcanic rocks. Thenceforth he worked at chemistry and

mineralogy

MINERALOGY

, and qualified himself for those petrographical researches for which he was distinguished. In 1874 he became professor of chemistry and geology in the college of the Belgian

Jesuits

JESUITS

at Louvain, a few years later he was appointed one of the curators of the Royal Natural History Museum at Brussels, and in 1882 he relinquished his post at Louvain. In 1888 he was chosen professor of geology at the university of

Ghent

GHENT (Flem. Gent, Fr. Gand)

, and retained the post until the close of his life. Meanwhile he had been ordained priest in 1877, and had intended to enter the Society of Jesus. He was known as the Abbe Renard; but, as remarked by Sir A.

Geikie

, " As years passed, the longing for mental freedom grew ever stronger, until at last it overmastered all the traditions and associations of a lifetime, and he finally separated himself from the church of Rome." His first

work

WORK

,
written in conjunction with Charles de la Vallee-Poussin (1827-1904), was the Memoire sur les caracteres mineralogiques et stratigraphiques des roches dices plutoniennes de la Belgique et de l'Ardenne francaise (1876). In later essays and papers he dealt with the structure and

mineral

MINERAL

composition of many igneous and sedimentary rocks, and with the phenomena of metamorphism in Belgium and other countries. In acknowledgment of his

work

WORK

the Bigsby

Medal

MEDAL (Fr. medaille, from Lat. metallum)

was in 1885 awarded to him by the Geological Society of London. Still more important were his later researches connected with the Challenger Expedition. The various

rock

specimens and oceanic deposits were submitted to him for examination in association with Sir John Murray, and their detailed observations were embodied in the Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. " Challenger." Deep Sea Deposits (1891). The more striking additions to our knowledge included " the detection and description of cosmic dust, which as fine rain slowly accumulates on the ocean floor; the development of zeolitic crystals on the sea-bottom at temperatures of 32 and under; and the distribution and mode of occurrence of manganiferous concretions and of phosphatic and glauconite deposits on the bed of the ocean " (

Geikie

). Renard died at Brussels on the 9th of July 1903.
Obituaries by Sir A. Geikie in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1x. 1904, and in Geol. Mag., Nov. 1903.

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