Early life

Étienne Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de Fonscolombe on 22 July 1772 in Aix-en-Provence, France. He was the son of Emmanuel Honoré Hippolyte de Boyer (1744, Aix, Saint-Sauveur-1810) an aristocrat who studied agronomy, writing on this subject in the Mémoires de l'académie d'Aix. He was educated at the Collège de Juilly.

Career

Upon finishing his education in 1789, "he had attended meetings of the Constituent Assembly in Versailles, with Mirabeau." He was later "Locked up as suspect" (1793–94). These were dangerous times-his father was also imprisoned in the Terror. On his release and marriage he lived with his parents and his mother-in-law at the castle of Montvert.

With the death of his father in 1810, he rented a floor of the hotel of Aix and the couple lived with his mother, who found him "Entomologiste très remarquable avec l’intelligence, la bonté, la vertu et le savoir" (a remarkable entomologist with intelligence, kindness, virtue and knowledge). Hippolyte and his brother Marcellin de Fonscolombe never ceased occupying themselves with the natural sciences "like those of antiquity and on medals".

From 1833, he entrusted the management of the Fonscolombe estates to his son-in-law, Adolphe de Saporta, and in 1848 he sold Montvert when it was left to his wife. He was then able to devote himself entirely to entomology. Following his father he published most of his work in Mémoires de l'académie d'Aix

Death

He died on 13 February 1853 in Aix-en-Provence.