Louis Ramond de Carbonnières

Louis François Élisabeth Ramond, baron de Carbonnières (4 January 1755 Strasbourg – 14 May 1827), was a French politician, geologist and botanist.

In Strasbourg he became friends with another student, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), a writer belonging to the then-fashionable Sturm und Drang movement.

Ramond undertook a voyage to Switzerland in May 1777 where he met writers and poets, as well as scientists: the theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), and the zoologists Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) and Charles Bonnet (1720–1793); he also came across his friend Lenz there.

Ramond started to explore the nearby mountains above Gavarnie and in the Maladetta Massif, to get a better acquaintance with their geological formations – these were the subject of a topical controversy, fed in particular by the limestone theories of Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750–1801) – and to see whether the mountains were granite or limestone, which was believed to be older rock.

To improve his knowledge of natural history, he followed the courses of Jussieu (1748–1836) and René Desfontaines (1780–1831) in the Jardin des Plantes.

Under surveillance and regarded as suspect, he left for Barèges, where he was able to indulge in his botanizing and mountain observations to his heart's content.

He corresponded with Philippe Picot of Lapeyrouse (1744–1818) and various botanists such as René Desfontaines, Jean Thore (1762–1823) and Domenica Villars (1745–1814).

In 1797, he was finally able to concentrate on a project which had long intrigued him: to reach the top of Monte Perdido (3,355 m) to counter the theories of Dolomieu and Lapeyrouse on the 'early era' of the limestone of the central chain.

The expedition, which comprised about fifteen people, including Picot of Lapeyrouse and several of Ramond's pupils, found many fossils, but did not reach the top.

In 1821, he spent the summer in Auvergne with René Desfontaines and two young naturalists, Victor Jacquemont (1801–1832) and Count Hippolyte Jaubert (1798–1874).