Hippolyte Sebert (30 January 1839 – 23 January 1930) was a French army general, scientist, and after World War I he was into internationalism and the promotion of Esperanto. Among his many interests was a universal bibliography, photography, and botany.
Life and work
Sebert was born in Verberie, he studied in Douai and joined the Ecole Polytechnique in 1858. He graduated in 1860 as a marine artillery officer and was posted to Toulon where he examined the expansion of explosives used in cannons.1 He worked in New Caledonia from 1866 to 1870 in the marine artillery office and began to study the mechanical properties of trees. In the process he also described the plant genus Cerberiopsis.2 Ilex sebertii was named after him by J.A.I. Pancher.3 In 1870 he served in the defense of Paris and served as aide-de-camp to General Frebault. In 1899 Sebert gave testimony in the trial of Dreyfus and helped exonerate him.4
Sebert joined the Société d'Encouragement pour l’industrie Nationale (SEIN) in 1874.5 He was interested in creating a universal bibliography of technical literature. After Sebert's death, the Bureau Bibliographique de Paris (BBP) that he helped found in 1899 along with Paul Otlet, who was also an Esperantist, was led by Eugene Morel. The organization transformed in 1944 to the Association d'Information Documentaire.6 Sebert also considered pictures as an international medium of communication and was interested in photography. He headed the board of the French Society of Photography (Société française de photographie) and in 1906, Sebert presided over the International Congress of Photographic Documentation in Marseille. He sought the creation of collections of photographs akin to libraries. He was also keen on international communication and standardization for which he promoted Esperanto.78
References
References
- Bret, Patrice (2006), "Managing Chemical Expertise: The Laboratories of the French Artillery and the Service des Poudres", in Macleod, Roy; Johnson, Jeffrey Allan (eds.), Frontline and Factory: Comparative Perspectives on the Chemical Industry at War, 1914–1924, vol. 16, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 203–219, doi:10.1007/1-4020-5490-4_12, ISBN 978-1-4020-5489-1, retrieved 2026-06-18
- Sebert, Hippolyte; Pancher, J.A.I. (1874). Notice sur les bois de la Nouvelle Calédonie : suivie de considérations générales sur les propriétés mécaniques des bois et sur les procédés employés pour les mesurer.
- Gâteblé, Gildas; Bruy, David; Lannuzel, Guillaume; Munzinger, Jérôme (2021-10-13). "Le genre Ilex (Aquifoliaceae) en Nouvelle-Calédonie". Candollea. 76 (2). doi:10.15553/c2021v762a8. ISSN 0373-2967.
- "Dreyfus' day of triumph". Daily Press. 2 September 1899. p. 1.
- Butrica, Andrew J. (1997). "Historical Collections in Jeopardy: The Societe d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale". Isis. 88 (2): 296–301. doi:10.1086/383693. ISSN 0021-1753.
- Fayet-Scribe, Sylvie (1997). "The cross-fertilization of the U.S. Public library model and the French documentation model (IIB, French correspondent of FID) through the French professional associations between World War I and World War II". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 48 (9): 782–793. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199709)48:9<782::AID-ASI3>3.0.CO;2-N. ISSN 0002-8231.
- Sohier, Estelle; Lugon, Olivier; Lacoste, Anne (2017). "Introduction. Les collections de photographies documentaires au tournant du XXe siècle". Transbordeur. 1: 8–17. doi:10.4000/12gvt. ISSN 2552-9137.
- Lebart, Luce (2017). "L'Internationale documentaire. Photographie, espéranto et documentation autour de 1900". Transbordeur. 1: 62–73. doi:10.4000/12gwb. ISSN 2552-9137.