1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fournier, Pierre Simon

FOURNET, JOSEPH JEAN BAPTISTE XAVIER (1801–1869), French geologist and metallurgist, was born at Strassburg on the 15th of May 1801. He was educated at the École des Mines at Paris, and after considerable experience as a mining engineer he was in 1834 appointed professor of geology at Lyons. He was a man of wide knowledge and extensive research, and wrote memoirs on chemical and mineralogical subjects, on eruptive rocks, on the structure of the Jura, the metamorphism of the Western Alps, on the formation of oolitic limestones, on kaolinization and on metalliferous veins. On metallurgical subjects also he was an acknowledged authority; and he published observations on the order of sulphurability of metals (loi de Fournet). He died at Lyons on the 8th of January 1869. His chief publications were: Études sur les dépôts métallifères (Paris, 1834); Histoire de la dolomie (Lyons, 1847); De l’extension des terrains houillers (1855); Géologie lyonnaise (Lyons, 1861).