Ferdinand André Fouqué

At the age of twenty-one he entered the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and from 1853 to 1858 he held the appointment of keeper of the scientific collections.

In 1877 he became professor of natural history in the chair of geology at the Collège de France,[1] in Paris, succeeding Charles Sainte-Claire Deville.

[1] He also worked on volcanic gas analyses, using the methods of Robert Bunsen, notably on the island of Santorini (Greece).

Ten years before Schliemann, in 1862, during geological excavations, in that astonishing volcanic product, the island of Santorin (Thera), M. Fouqué had brought to light a whole civilisation buried beneath a layer of pumice-stone, due to an eruption supposed to have happened about 2000 B.C.

He found walls coated with stucco, and painted with stripes and floral decorations, hand-made and wheel-made pottery; in short, the relics of a civilisation which we should now call 'Mycenæan.