Philippe Buache

Philippe Buache (born La Neuville-au-Pont, 7 February 1700; died Paris, 24 January 1773) was a French geographer, known for inventing a new system of geography and popularizing this field.

[1] Buache was trained under the geographer Guillaume Delisle, whose daughter he married, and whom he succeeded in the Académie des sciences in 1730.

He established the division of the world by seas and river systems.

He believed in a southern continent, an hypothesis which was confirmed by later discoveries.

His nephew, Jean Nicolas Buache (born La Neuville-au-Pont, 15 February 1741; died Paris, 21 November 1825), was also a geographer of the king.

This 1753 map by Philippe Buache locates Fusang ("Fou-Sang des Chinois", "Fusang of the Chinese") north of the State of California .
Philippe Buache, Carte d'une partie de l'Océan vers l'Équateur entre les costes d'Afrique et d'Amérique... Paris, 1737. Map engraved on copper (63,5 x 48,3 cm), showing Fernando de Noronha island
Jean-Étienne Guettard and Philippe Buache, Carte minéralogique sur la nature du terrain d’une portion de l’Europe , possibly the first true geologic map .