Ami Boué

Ami Boué (16 March 1794 – 21 November 1881) was a geologist of French origin. He was born at Hamburg, and received his early education there and in Geneva and Paris.

Career

Proceeding to Edinburgh to study medicine at the university, he came under the influence of Robert Jameson, whose teachings in geology and mineralogy inspired his future career. Boué was thus led to make geological expeditions to various parts of Scotland and the Hebrides, and after taking his degree of M.D. in 1817 he settled for some years in Paris.

In 1820 he issued his Essai géologique sur l'Écosse, in which the eruptive rocks in particular were carefully described. He travelled much in Germany, Austria and southern Europe, studying various geological formations, and becoming one of the pioneers in geological research; he was one of the founders of the Société Géologique de France in 1830, and was its president in 1835. In 1841 he settled in Vienna, and became naturalized as an Austrian.

To the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna he communicated important papers on the geology of the Balkan States (1859–1870), and he also published Mémoires géologiques et paléontologiques (Paris, 1832) and La Turquie d'Europe; observations sur la geographie, la géologie, l'histoire naturelle, etc. (Paris, 1840).

Evolution

Boué was an advocate of transmutation of species. He was influenced by the evolutionary views of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

He was supportive of spontaneous generation and argued that spontaneously generated organisms existed at the microscopic level between animals and plants.

Honours

Ami Boué Peak on Graham Land in Antarctica and Ami Boué Street in Sofia, Bulgaria are named after Ami Boué.