Talk:Horace Bénédict de Saussure

Untitled
Perhaps the mineral sausserite is named after him. Dentren |  Ta lk  14:15, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Roches moutonnees
In their standard work on the subject 'Glaciers & Glaciation' (Arnold, London 1998) Douglas Benn and David Evans claim that it was 'de Saussure' who in 1786 coined the term familiar to geography students for an ice-smoothed rock in a glaciated region. He saw in these rocks a resemblance to the wigs that were fashionable amongst gentry in his era and which were smoothed over with mutton fat hence 'moutonnee' so as to keep the hair in place. Anyone know anything more about this? Geopersona (talk) 04:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Lead Image


I commented out the following section in the article, referring to the lead image.

"I think that this is actually a statue of Michel-Gabriel Paccard the first person to climb Mont Blanc"

Feel free to add the image back if you are able to definitively confirm/deny this claim. But such discussion belongs here and not in the actual article. Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Saussurea not named after him?
The article says: "The genus of high alpine plants Saussurea, some adapted to growing in some of the most extreme high alpine climates tolerated by any plant, is named after him."

The article on Saussurea says that the genus is named after his son Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure instead; this is supported by Store Norske Leksikon, the foremost Norwegian encyclopedia. Does anyone have sources actually supporting the genus being named after HBS and not NTS?

OMHalck (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistent naming
The article refers to Saussure in some places and de Saussure in others. In order to make the naming consistent across the article, which should be preferred? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:19, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok then, I propose to insert "de" in front of "Saussure" wherever missing. Any objections?  --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:41, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Republic of Geneva
Category:People from the Republic of Geneva (1541–1815) has been a subcategory of Category:People by canton in Switzerland for quite a while. Why exclude them from Swiss categories? Dimadick (talk) 11:46, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The citizens of the Republic of Geneva who died before Geneva joined Switzerland should not be classified as « Swiss ». This would be an anachronism, and would sometimes lead to absurdities. Nobody would classify John Calvin as a « Swiss theologian », although he became citizen (« Burgher ») of Geneva. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was so proud of being from Geneva that he signed some of his works « Citoyen de Genève »: it would be a nonsense to qualify him as « Swiss » (especially since he occasionally expressed mixed feelings towards Swiss people…). And François Bonivard used to be qualified as a « Swiss patriot » on wikipedia; this is completely absurd, and has been corrected since: he was a Genevan patriot, and it is precisely for this reason that the Swiss imprisoned him! --Sapphorain (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Infobox
I am considering to try to build an infobox for this article. Any objections - or suggestions? About others, I looked a bit into inconsistent naming section above and into sources cited in the article, and almost all sources spell de Saussure, so I'll also add de everywhere it's still missing, as Vaughan Pratt suggested a decade ago (and nobody objected yet). Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 05:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * No. There is no inconsistency in omitting the particle "de" when referring to a person only by using his or her last name, when the name without the particle contains more than one syllable. One refers simply to "Saussure" and not to "de Saussure" (but to "de Gaulle" and not to "Gaulle"). This is the standard rule. --Sapphorain (talk) 09:07, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that there's no inconsistency here. Furthermore I googled "Saussure" and while "de" was used after the first name (any of Horace, Ferdinand, or Raymond), I could find no examples of "de Saussure" without the first name, it was always "Saussure".  So I guess I was misled when I suggested inserting "de".  Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)