HAUY, RENÉ JUST, an eminent French mineralogist, was born at St Just, in the department of Oise, Feb. 29th, 1743. His parents were in a humble rank of life, and were only enabled by the kindness of friends to educate their son. He was sent to Paris to the College of Navarre, and afterwards to that of Lemoine, where he finished his course amid incredible privations and difficulties. He escaped from these, when, in 1764, he was himself appointed one of the teachers in the first of the above-named colleges. He began to devote his leisure hours to the study of botany, but an accident directed his attention to another field in natural history. Happening to let fall a beautiful specimen of calcareous spar belonging to a friend, he discovered, by examining the fragments, the geometrical law of crystallization. (See CRYSTALLIZATION.) Dambenton and Laplace immediately recognized the scientific value of the discovery, which, when communicated to the Royal Academy, secured for its author a place in that society. When the Revolution
broke out, Hauy was thrown into prison, and his life was even in danger, when he was saved by the intercession of Geoffroy St Hilaire. Under Napoleon, he became professor of mineralogy at the Museum of Natural History. He also obtained other scientific preferment, of which he was deprived by the feeble and fanatical government of the Restoration, though his royalism had been a serious bar to his promotion under the Empire. His latter days were consequently clouded by the poverty which had threatened to blight his early career. But the courage and high moral qualities which had helped him forward in his youth did not desert him in his old age; and, as France is a country where poverty does not necessarily entail neglect or contempt, Hauy lived cheerful and respected till his death, June 3, 1823. The following are his principal works:—
Essai d'une Théorie sur la Structure des Cristaux, 1784, in 8vo; Exposition raisonnée de la Théorie de l'Électricité et du Magnétisme, d'après les Principes d'Épinus, 1787, in 8vo; De la Structure considérée comme Caractère Distinctif des Minéraux, 1793, in 8vo; Exposition abrégée de la Théorie de la Structure des Cristaux, 1793, in 8vo; Extrait d'un Traité Élémentaire de Minéralogie, 1797, in 8vo; Traité de Minéralogie, 1802, 4 vols. in 8vo, et planches in 4to; Traité Élémentaire de Physique, 1803, in 12mo, deuxième édition, in 1806, 2 vols. 8vo; Tableau Comparatif des Résultats de la Cristallographie, et de l'Analyse Chimique relativement à la Classification des Minéraux; Traité des Pierres Précieuses, 1817, in 8vo; Traité de Cristallographie, 1822, 2 vols. with engravings. M. Hauy also contributed papers to various scientific journals, particularly the Journal d'Histoire Naturelle, Annales de Chimie, the Journal de Physique, the Magasin Encyclopédique, the Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, and the Journal des Mines. He also communicated several memoirs to various other scientific journals.