Dubois de Montpéreux

Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux (b. 1798, Môtiers, Switzerland – d. 1850, Môtiers, Switzerland) was a Swiss traveler, naturalist and antiquarian, professor at the Academy of Neuchâtel.

In 1831–1834, with the support of the Russian government, he traveled along the northern coast of the Black Sea, Ukraine and the Caucasus. The results of the trip are gathered in the six-volume work Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie et en Crimée (1839–1845), which was published in French.

The French Geographical Society (Société de Géographie) awarded Dubois de Montpéreux a large gold medal for the above-mentioned work. The work contains rich factual material about the nature and antiquities of the listed regions and countries. The author paid special attention to the historical issues of individual peoples, monuments of Georgian and Armenian architecture. He expressed his opinions about Georgian architecture.

In his opinion, Georgian architecture was a branch or reflection of Byzantine and Armenian architecture. Georgian art historians refuted this erroneous theory.

Dubois de Montpéreux is the first Western European researcher of the geological structure of Georgia and the entire Caucasus.

He was the first to study the issues of stratigraphy of Georgia. According to his observations, the crystalline core of the Caucasus, which he investigated in the Darial Gorge and Abkhazia, consists of granites, diorites and porphyries. Thus, Dubois de Montpéreux established the symmetry of the mentioned ridge.

He is the founder of the geological cartography of the Caucasus. He compiled the first geological map of the Caucasus, which is included in the atlas attached to his work.

 

Literary work: Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie et en Crimée, v. 1–6, P., 1839–45.

Literature: ჯ ა ნ ე ლ ი ძ ე  ა., ნარკვევები გეოლოგიის ისტორიიდან, თბ., 1959; Б е р и д з е  В. В., Против искажения истории грузинcкого искусства (Древнeгрузинское искусство в свете зарубежной науки), Тб., 1949.

V. Beridze

V. Javrishvili