Geo&Bio (Jun 2023)
Pages of history of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris) in medal art
Abstract
The article briefly covers the pages of the history of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris, France), which was established in 1793, inheriting the material base and collections of one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world—the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants. Contribution to the development of the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants was made by its leaders and employees: Guy de La Brosse, Guy Crescent Fagon, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Pierre Chirac, the family of French botanists de Jussieu, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. After its foundation, the museum was managed, among others, by Louis Jean-Marie D’Aubenton, Bernard Germain Étienne de Laville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, George-Léopold-Chrétien-Frédéric-Dagobert Cuvier, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Adolphe Théodore Brongniart, André Marie Constant Duméril, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Jean Octave Edmond Perrier, Achille Joseph Urbain, Maurice Alfred Fontaine, and Jean Dorst. The heyday of the scientific activity of the Museum was during the long years of leadership of Michel Eugène Chevrel. Table medals of France and the USA, researched and described by the authors of the article, were created to honour these famous scientists. Attention is also drawn to modern tourist medals (tokens) dedicated to the Museum’s facilities: the Garden of the Plants, the Great Evolution Gallery, the Palaeontological Museum (Galleries of Comparative Anatomy and Palaeontology), the Botanical Garden Zoo, and the Vincennes Zoo. The results of the analysis of the medals made it possible to display in a new plane the most vivid pages of the history of the Museum, the function of which is teaching, research, and dissemination of natural science knowledge, its modernity, biographies of outstanding personalities who worked in it. Most of the medals were first introduced into scientific biological circulation. The obtained information once again confirmed the possibility of using objects that are studied by special historical disciplines (in this case, the section of numismatics, medal art) for the study of the history of science.
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