Sébastien Bottin

Sébastien Bottin was a French statistician and politician who lived from 1764 to 1853. He was born on 17 December 1764 in Grimonviller, in Meurthe, and sat in the Chamber of Representatives for Nord during the Hundred Days of 1815. He edited the Almanach du commerce de Paris, which had been founded by Jean de La Tynna, and in 1799 he co-founded the Société libre des Sciences et Arts de Strasbourg. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1814 and joined the Société des Antiquaires de France in 1818. The Académie des Sciences honoured him with a prize in statistics in 1824, and the Société française de statistique universelle gave him its honorary medal in 1833. He died in Paris on 28 March 1853 and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery. A street in Paris was named after him in 1929, and his surname became a colloquial French word for a telephone directory.