Philippe Buache


Philippe Buache was a French geographer, known for inventing a new system of geography and popularizing this topic.

Life and work

Buache was trained by the geographer Guillaume Delisle, whose daughter he married, and whom he succeeded in the Académie [des sciences] in 1730.
Buache was nominated first geographer of the king in 1729. He established a division of the world by seas and river systems. He believed in a southern continent, an hypothesis which was confirmed by later discoveries. In 1754, he published an "Atlas physique." He also wrote several pamphlets.
His nephew, Jean Nicolas Buache, was also a geographer of the king.

Works

  • . This contains a chart of the western coast of North America.
  • Le parallèle des fleuves des quatre parties du monde pour servir a déterminer la hauteur des montagnes
  • Mémoire sur la traversée de la mer glaciale arctique. This contains his hypothesis of an Alaskan peninsula.
  • ''Considérations géographiques sur les terres australes et antarctiques''