Ferdinand de Lesseps
French diplomat and entrepreneur, developer of the Suez Canal (1805–1894)
AI overview
Ferdinand de Lesseps was a French diplomat and businessman who designed and oversaw the construction of the Suez Canal in the mid-1800s, one of the world's most important waterways. His achievement in connecting Europe and Asia through Egypt fundamentally transformed global trade and shipping, making him one of the most influential figures of his era.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 19 November 1805
- Died
- 7 December 1894
- Works
- 49
Top works
- Conférences de la rue de la Paix
- Percement de l'isthme de Suez ...
- Ma mission á Rome mai 1849
- Algérie et Tunisie
- Réponse de m. F. de Lesseps au Ministère et au Conseil d'état, aout 1849
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Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 34,528x
- PLINK: A Tool Set for Whole-Genome Association and Population-Based Linkage Analyses
· 2007 · cited 30,796x
Article
Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps ( French: [lesɛps]; 19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was a French Orientalist diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal, which in 1869, joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distances and times between Europe and East Asia.
He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a Panama Canal at sea level during the 1880s, but the project was devastated by epidemics of malaria and yellow fever in the area, as well as by financial problems, and the planned Lesseps Panama Canal was never completed. Eventually, the project was bought out by the United States, which solved the medical problems and changed the design to a non-sea- level canal with locks. It was completed in 1914.
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1805 births1894 deaths19th-century French businesspeople19th-century French diplomatsBurials at Père Lachaise CemeteryCommanders Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar StarDe Lesseps familyFellows of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesFrench canal engineersFrench expatriates in EgyptFrench expatriates in ItalyFrench expatriates in Portugal