Jacques Balmat Jacques Balmat Jacques Balmat, called "le Mont Blanc" (1762–1834) was a mountaineer, a Savoyard mountain guide, born in the Chamonix valley in Savoy, at this time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A chamois hunter and collector of crystals, Balmat completed the first ascent of Mont Blanc with physician Michel-Gabriel Paccard on 8 August 1786. For this feat, King Victor Amadeus III gave him the honorary title "le Mont Blanc". Balmat and Paccard's ascent of Mont Blanc was a major accomplishment in the early history of mountaineering. C. Douglas Milner wrote "The ascent itself was magnificent; an amazing feat of
Jacques de Morgan Europe and Greece, it still retains the traces of those civilizations that were the cradle of our own." In 1887-89 he unearthed 576 graves around Alaverdi and Akhatala, near the Tiflis-Alexandropol railway line. His father Eugène, also called "Baron" de Morgan, was an engineer in mineral findings. His interests were in entomology and prehistory. He named his two sons, Henry and Jacques. His sons later got into fieldwork, excavating the Campigny faults near Rouen with him, which had lent its name to the first phase of the European Neolithic. With his father Jacques became acquainted with Gabriel de Mortillet, who