Philibert Guinier

Philibert Guinier was a French botanist, forester and a pioneer of ecology in French.

Education and career

Guinier was born in Grenoble, France as the son of Ernest Guinier, who is a forester. His father was also a pioneer in the study of natural sciences in forestry.
Philibert studied at the Institut national agronomique in Paris in 1895 and the French National School of Forestry in Nancy in 1897. He began his career as a forester in 1900 as a general guard at Grenoble, then joined the ENEF in Nancy in 1901 first as attached to the Research Station then as a forestry botany lecturer from 1903 to 1941. He was director of the French National School of Forestry for 20 years, from 1921 to his retirement in 1941. He thus trained hundreds of forestry officers in biological sciences.
After his first years as a botanist, Guinier broadened his field of knowledge and action in pedology, genetics, reforestation, pathology and physiology thanks to his interactions with scientists such as Georges Le Monnier, Émile Schribaux, Henri Hitier, and René Maire. He participated in the war effort in 1914, by improving the supply of wood for artillery and aviation, and undertook the first French scientific research on wood, founding xylology. In 1941, he was the author of the first AFNOR wood nomenclature. He is the successor of the phytosociologist Charles Flahault.

Guinier was the national correspondent of the Academy of Agriculture from 1923 and member in 1936. He is the leader of the French National Poplar Commission created in 1942 and the French National Walnut Commission. In 1929, Guinier was elected president of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations. In 1942, he took charge of the management of the Arboretum d'Harcourt. He was president of the Société botanique de France in 1946. He was elected member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1953 in the rural economy section, in the chair of Louis Lapicque. In 1957, he was president of the French Association for the Advancement of Sciences.

In 1907, Guinier married Lucie Mathilde Le Monnier, daughter of Georges Le Monnier, in Nancy. They had two sons and a daughter, including physicist André Guinier.