Munier-Chalmas, Ernest Charles Philippe Auguste

MUNIER-CHALMAS, ERNEST CHARLES PHILIPPE AUGUSTE

(b. Tournus, France, 7 April 1843; d. Saint-Simon, near Aix-les-Bains, France, 8 August 1903)

paleontology, stratigraphy.

Although he received only an inferior early edu- cation, Munier-Chalmas was able, through a combi- nation of intelligence and willpower, to teach himself geology so successfully that he eventually became a professor of that subject at the Sorbonne. After holding a number of menial jobs, Munier-Chalmas in 1863 was made an assistant in the Sorbonne’s geology laboratory. He worked under the supervision of Edmond Hébert and, as a result of his diligence in his task of self-education, became Hébert’s closest collaborator, accompanying him on geological trips throughout France, northern Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Having attained the master’s degree, Munier-Chalmas was able to begin teaching at the École Normale in 1882, but his doctoral thesis, on the Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Cenozoic deposits of the Vicentin, presented in 1891, was never published. He succeeded Hébert in the chair of geology at the Sorbonne in 1891 and was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1903.

Munier-Chalmas’s paleontological skills comple- mented Hébert’s stratigraphical ones, and their collaboration was mutually profitable. His own paleontological work included his investigations of the Brachiopoda, Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, Foraminifera, and Calcareous Algae. He was also concerned with classification and nomenclature, and established a number of new genera, comprising Toucasia, Matheronia, and Heterodiceras. One of his findings—that the shapes of the shells of some groups of ammonites clearly indicate sexual dimorphism, while those of other groups do not—led to a number of taxonomic changes and reclassifications.

In stratigraphy, Munier-Chalmas’s chief contri- bution concerned the Cenozoic of the Paris Basin. “Note sur la nomenclature des terrains sédimentaires,”published in 1893 and written with Lapparent (who had earlier supervised the surveying of that region) is his chief work. He also collaborated with Paul Henri Fischer, to whom he supplied much data for his Manuel de conchyliologie (1880–1887).

Munier-Chalmas was not particularly successful as a teacher; he was unable to communicate his ideas to large audiences, and he was continually hampered by an awareness of his own educational deficiencies. His influence, however, is clear in the works of his students—the more so that he was reluctant to publish his findings himself. Nevertheless, he had published more than sixty papers before 1900, including nine in the single year of 1892.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Munier-Chalmas’s publications include “Prodrome d’une classification des Rudistes,”in Journal de conchyliologie, 3rd ser., 13 (1873), 71–75; “Matériaux pour servir à la description du terrain Crétacé supérieur en France,”“Description du bassin d’Uchaux,”and “Appendice paléontologique (Fossiles du bassin d’Uchaux),”in Annales de la Société géologique, 6 , pt. 2. (1875), 1–132, all written with E. Hébert; “Mollusques nou- veaux des terrains paléozoiuml;ques des environs de Rennes,”in Journal de conchyliologie, 3rd ser., 16 (1876), 102–109; “Diagnosis generis novi Molluscorum Cephalopodorum fossilium,”ibid., 3rd ser., 20 (1880), 183–184; Étude du Tithonique, du Créfacé et du Tertiaire du Vicentin (Paris, 1891); “Note sur la nomenclature des terrains sédimen- taires,”in Bulletin de la Société géologique de France, 3rd ser., 21 (1893), 438–488, written with A. de Lapparent; and “Note préliminaire sur les assises montiennes du bassin de Paris,”ibid., 3rd ser., 25 (1897), 82–91.

II. Secondary Leterature. Munier-Chalmas’s Étude du Tithonique … is reviewed by A. Andreae in Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie, pt. 1 (1894), 156–160. See also G. F. Dollfus, “Nécrologie de E. Munier-Chalmas,”in Journal de conchyliologie, 52 (1904), 100–106.

Albert V. Carozzi