Henri Ungemach
Henri Léon Ungemach was an Alsatian mineralogist who made a collection of minerals, nearly 3000 of which are now held at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He described minerals using their crystal geometry. The minerals Ungemachite and Clino-Ungemachite are named after him. He also collected insects, molluscs and plants during his travels.
Life and work
Ungemach was born in Strasbourg to industrialist Charles Léon and Marie Élisabeth. He went to study at the Jean Sturm Gymnasium in Strasbourg before going to the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich to study chemistry. He graduated in 1904 and went to the Imperial University of Strasbourg where he received a doctorate in 1907 with a thesis on the minerals of the Val de Villé. He travelled to North America before joining in prospecting for silver in the Val de Villé from 1908. In 1912 he joined the Compagnie Générale des Colonies for prospecting in Morocco and Madagascar. During World War I he joined an Alsatian regiment but refused to fight for the Germans. After World War I he travelled extensively including to Ethiopia. Chronic bronchitis made him return to Strasbourg in 1932 where he began to catalogue the mineral collections in the university. He studied crystals and made goniometric measurements of more than 2300 crystals using a Babinet-Fuess one-circle reflecting goniometer. He drew the crystal structures with great care and calculated Miller indices for the faces. His work was later used in comparisons with X-ray crystallography results. His diagrams were also used in the atlas produced by Victor Goldschmidt. He introduced a term "syntaxy" referring to intergrowth of dimorphous substances. Just before his death he passed on some of his collections and manuscripts to José Donnay of the University of Baltimore. Donnay donated the collections to the Canadian museum. After his death some of his collections went to the Université de Liège in Belgium. His lepidopteran collections are in Paris. A number of species were described from his collections and named after him including:Colotis ungemachi Le Cerf, 1922Tarucus ungemachi Stempffer, 1924Cigaritis allardi ungemachi Rothschild, 1926Plebejus martini ungemachi Rothschild, 1926Acraea ungemachi Le Cerf, 1927Charaxes lactetinctus ungemachi Le Cerf, 1927Atlantarctia ungemachi Le Cerf, 1924Odontocheilopteryx ungemachi Tams, 1931Adactylotis ungemachi D. Lucas, 1933Uollega ungemachi Berio, 1945Aspidhampsonia ungemachi Laporte, 1978Aspidifrontia ungemachi Laporte, 1978Amazonides ungemachi Laporte, 1984Stilbotis ungemachi Laporte, 1984Oreocossus ungemachi Rougeot, 1977Ungemach married Éva Denise Andrée, daughter of the French art historian Léonce Bénédite in Paris in 1908. They had four children.