Pierre Jean Édouard Desor [SEP] date of death
Pierre Jean Édouard Desor
Pierre Jean Édouard Desor (13 February 1811, Friedrichsdorf, Grand Duchy of Hesse23 February 1882) was a German-Swiss geologist and naturalist.
Biography.
Desor studied law at Giessen and Heidelberg, was compromised in the republican movements of 1832/3 (see, for example, Hambach Festival and Frankfurter Wachensturm), and escaped to Paris. Here his attention was drawn to geology. He made excursions with Élie de Beaumont, and in 1837 met Louis Agassiz at a meeting of naturalists in Neufchâtel.
The peak had been attempted several times before this, most notably by the Swiss naturalist Joseph Hugi in 1828 and the guided party of Pierre Jean Édouard Desor (a Swiss geologist) in 1842. 'The ambition of hoisting the first flag on the Schreckhorn, the one big Bernese summit which was untrodden, was far too obvious for us to resist', Desor later wrote, but they climbed a secondary summit of the Lauteraarhorn by mistake.
The first ascent by the south-west ridge (AD+) – the