Auguste Bravais (23.08.1811 - 30.03.1863) was a French physicist and a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1854). He was born in Annonay. In 1840-45 he was professor at the faculty of sciences in Lyon, and from 1845 at the École Polytechnique in Paris. His work was in the field of optics, magnetism,
crystallography and meteorology. He laid the foundations of the geometrical theory of the structure
of crystals. He put forward the hypothesis that the space lattices of crystals are built
up of points regularly arranged in space — nodes (the positions of the atoms) — which can be obtained by means of parallel displacements, or translations (1848). As a result of drawing
lines and planes through these points the space lattice is divided into equal parallelepipeds, or cells. He established the fundamental types of the space lattices of crystals (the Bravais lattices).