Philippe Buache was a French geographer.

Buache was trained under the geographer Guillaume Delisle

Guillaume Delisle

Guillaume Delisle was a French cartographer who lived in Paris.His father, Claude Delisle studied law and then later settled in Paris as private teacher in geography and history, and afterwards filled the office of royal censor...

, whose daughter he married, and whom he succeeded in the Académie des sciences in 1730. Buache was nominated first geographer of the king in 1729. 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. In 1754, he published an "Atlas physique." He also wrote several pamphlets.

His nephew, Jean Nicolas Buache (born La Neuville-au-Pont

La Neuville-au-Pont

La Neuville-au-Pont is a commune in the Marne department in the Champagne-Ardenne region in north-eastern France.-See also:*Communes of the Marne department...

, 15 February 1741; died Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, 21 November 1825), was also a geographer of the king.

Works

• Considérations géographiques et physiques sur les découvertes nouvelles dans la grande mer (Paris, 1754). This contains a chart of the western coast of North America.
• Le parallèle des fleuves des quatre parties du monde pour servir a déterminer la hauteur des montagnes (1757)
• Mémoire sur la traversée de la mer glaciale arctique (1759). This contains his hypothesis of an Alaskan peninsula.
• Considérations géographiques sur les terres australes et antarctiques (1761)

External Links

• The French West Indies Collection, including geographical writings of cartographer Philippe Buache, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historical society founded in 1824 and based in Philadelphia. The Society's building, designed by Addison Hutton and listed on Philadelphia's Register of Historical Places, houses some 600,000 printed items and over 19 million manuscript and graphic items...
  
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