Louis Antoine de Bougainville

Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), French military officer and navigator, known for his important contributions to science and geography during the last half of the 18th century.

Bougainville was born and educated in Paris. He studied law but abandoned it to join the French army in 1754. At the age of 25 he wrote a paper on integral calculus and was subsequently made a member of the Royal Society of London. During the French and Indian War, he served as aide-de-camp to Marquis Louis Joseph Montcalm de Saint-Véran in Canada, taking part in the defense of Ticonderoga and Québec. Bougainville later fought in Germany during the Seven Years' War. In 1764 he established a French colony in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), but it was soon abandoned because of objections by Spain, which claimed the islands. He became the first Frenchman to sail around the world (1766-1769), visiting Samoa Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. He was accompanied by naturalists and astronomers and made many scientific and geographic discoveries. He published his experiences during the expedition as Account of a Voyage Around the World (2 volumes, 1771-1772; trans. 1772).

During the American Revolution Bougainville served with the French force in America led by the French naval officer Comte François Joseph Paul de Grasse. In 1789 Bougainville was promoted to rear admiral and in 1790 to field marshal. Soon afterward he retired to devote himself to science.

Bougainville was chosen a member of the Institute de France in 1796, the year it was created. Napoleon made Bougainville a senator and count of the empire and a member of the Legion of Honor. The largest of the Solomon Islands, a strait in the Solomon Islands, and a channel in Vanuatu are all named for Bougainville, as is the tropical American flowering vine Bougainvillea.