science

Société de Géographie

Société de Géographie is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Société de Géographie rather than just read about it. In short: The Société de Géographie (French: [sɔsjete də ʒeɔgʁafi]; lit. '"Geography Society"'), is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 as the first Geographic Society.

Key takeaways

Société de Géographie belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Société de Géographie to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Société de Géographie from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Société de Géographie (French: [sɔsjete də ʒeɔgʁafi]; lit. '"Geography Society"'), is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 as the first Geographic Society. Since 1878, its headquarters have been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gigantic caryatids representing Land and Sea. It was here, in 1879, that the construction of the Panama Canal was decided. The society has been publishing the journal La Géographie since 1822.

History The Geographical Society was founded at a meeting on 15 December 1821 in the Paris Hôtel de Ville. Among its 217 founders were some of the greatest scientific names of the time, including Pierre-Simon Laplace (the Society's first president), Georges Cuvier, Charles Pierre Chapsal, Vivant Denon, Joseph Fourier, Gay-Lussac, Claude Louis Berthollet, Alexander von Humboldt, Champollion, and François-René de Chateaubriand. Most of the men who had accompanied Bonaparte in his Egyptian expedition were members: Edme-François Jomard, Conrad Malte-Brun, Jules Dumont d'Urville, Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert, Hottinguer, Henri Didot, Bottin and others such as Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès. Although the Society rarely funded scientific travel, by issuing instructions to voyagers, encouraging research through competitions, and publishing the results of their work, it served in its early years as "an important institutional support" for the study of Mesoamerica. Two members in the "active core" of the society played central roles in this regard: Jomard and the Irish exile and former United States consul David Ballie Warden. Their terms for a competition for the best new work on "American antiquities", including maps "constructed according to exact methods" and "observations on the mores and customs of the indigenous peoples, and vocabularies of the ancient languages." extended decades-old scientific practices to a new field of anthropological inquiry. The society was to be associated in time with the greatest French and foreign explorers from René Caillié, the first European to return alive from the town of Timbuktu, to the underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, and leading geographers, among them Vidal de la Blache, founder of the French School of Geopolitics. In 1879, under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Society hosted an international congress on the questioning of an Interocéanique canal across Central America, the findings of which led to the initial efforts to construct the Panama Canal. The Society was the location of the Arab Congress of 1913, which took place from June 18 to June 23 of that year and marked the confluence of events surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the beginnings of Arab nationalism, and the early Arab reaction to Zionist immigration to Palestine.

Publications The Society's revue has appeared monthly since 1822, as Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (1822–1899) – offering in octavo format early news of all the discoveries of the nineteenth century – or quarterly, as La Géographie, with a break from 1940 until 1946. Since 1947 the Society's magazine has appeared three times a year, as Acta Geographica.

List of presidents

Awards

Grande Médaille d'Or des Explorations The Grande Médaille d'Or des Explorations et Voyages de Découverte (Great Gold Medal of Exploration and Journeys of Discovery) has been awarded since 1829 for journeys whose outcomes have enhanced geographical knowledge. Notable recipients have been John Franklin (1829), John Ross (1834), David Livingstone (1857), Ernest Shackleton (1910) and Roald Amundsen (1913). The Société de Géographie Peninsula in Kerguelen was named in honor of this institution.

See also Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires

Notes

References Société de Géographie official site (in French)

External links La Géographie : bulletin de la Société de géographie dans Gallica, la bibliothèque numérique de la BnF.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Société de Géographie

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Société de Géographie claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Société de Géographie before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Société de Géographie ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Société de Géographie

In research: Société de Géographie appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Société de Géographie in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Société de Géographie is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1821 establishments in France, Geographic societies, History of geography, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Société de Géographie outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Société de Géographie in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Société de Géographie means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Société de Géographie out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Société de Géographie in simple terms?

The Société de Géographie (French: [sɔsjete də ʒeɔgʁafi]; lit. '"Geography Society"'), is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 as the first Geographic Society.

Why does Société de Géographie matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Société de Géographie?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Société de Géographie.