Gustave Lambert
French hydrographer
Marie Joseph Gustave Adolphe Lambert (1 July 1824 – 27 January 1871) was a French hydrographer.
He taught for 20 years, then went on a voyage into Arctic seas and conceived the idea of an expedition to the North Pole. He thought that in summer the effect of the constant sunshine (insolation) would be to melt the ice and allow passage to the Pole. The plans had been made, about half the funding had been subscribed, and a ship had been purchased when the project was disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Lambert enlisted in the National Guard and died of wounds at the Battle of Buzenval (1871).
Early years
Gustave Lambert was born in Grièges, Ain, on 1 July 1824. He was the son of Jean-Francois Lambert, a notary from Paris, and Rosalie Blanc.
The family moved from Grieges to Priay, Ain, around 1825. In 1835 Gustave's father became a manufacturer of sugar, and later of candles.
These businesses were not successful, and in 1840 his father retired to Lyon.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gustave Lambert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.