Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond (17 May 174118 July 1819) was a French geologist, volcanologist and traveller.
Life
He was born at Montélimar. He was educated at the Jesuit's College at Lyon and afterwards at Grenoble where he studied law and was admitted as an advocate to the parlement.
He rose to be president of the seneschal's court in Montélimar (1765), where he acquitted himself with distinction. However, he became disenchanted with law and wished to pursue his love of nature that had begun earlier in his life. His favourite pastime was visiting the mountain regions in the Alps and Massif Central. There he began to study the forms, structure, composition and superposition of rocks. In 1776, he established a relationship with Buffon, who recognised the value of his scientific efforts immediately. Invited by Buffon to Paris, Faujas ceased his legal work and was appointed assistant naturalist to the natural history museum by Louis XVI. Later, he was appointed royal commissioner for mines.
thumb|left|Fingal's Cave ca. 1900
One of his most important works was Recherches sur les volcans éteints du Vivarais et du Velay, which appeared in 1778. This publication documented his astute observations allowing Faujas to develop a theory about the origin of volcanoes. In his capacity of commissioner for mines Faujas travelled to most European countries where he closely observed the natural environment and the rock formations. In Britain he met William and Caroline Herschel. He however was determined to visit Staffa and he set out with the American polymath William Thornton and the Italian balloonist Count Andreani.
Faujas was the first to recognize the volcanic nature of the basaltic columns of Fingal's Cave, on Staffa. The island was visited earlier in 1772 by Sir Joseph Banks, who remarked that the stone was a coarse kind of basalt, very much resembling the Giant's Causeway in Ireland (as noted in Pennant's Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides). Faujas' Voyage en Angleterre, en Écosse et aux Îles Hébrides (1797) contains anecdotes about Sir Joseph Banks, William and Caroline Herschel and Dr. John Whitehurst, including an amusing account of The Dinner of an Academic Club (the Royal Society). It was shortly translated into English (2 vols., 1799).