Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois

French First Republic state institutions Jacobins and French revolutionary radicals 1763–1832 ○ Natural causes

Engineer officer on the Committee of Public Safety who organised munitions production with Carnot

Born at Auxonne in the Côte-d'Or in 1763, he became an officer of engineers and in 1790 presented the Constituent Assembly with a memorandum on standardising weights and measures. As a deputy for the Côte-d'Or in the Legislative Assembly and the Convention he voted for the death of Louis XVI. After the fall of the Girondins in June 1793 he was arrested in Normandy by the rebel authorities of Caen and released in July. He entered the Committee of Public Safety on 14 August 1793, organised national defence with Carnot and was in charge of munitions; working with scientists, he brought observation balloons onto the battlefield. Under the Directory he sat in the Council of Five Hundred, and he took part in founding the École Polytechnique and adopting the metric system. He was made a count of the Empire in 1808 and died in Dijon in 1832.

Also known as: Prieur de la Côte-d'Or