Education
After attending school in Altkirch and Dijon, Hommaire graduated as an engineer at the École des Mines in Saint-Étienne in 1833.
After attending school in Altkirch and Dijon, Hommaire graduated as an engineer at the École des Mines in Saint-Étienne in 1833.
In October 1835, he went Turkey where he coordinated the construction of a suspension bridge in Constantinople and a lighthouse on the Black Sea coast. In 1838, he arrived in southern Russia where he performed ethnographical research and geographical surveys. After he discovered coal resources along the Dnieper River, Czar Nicholas I awarded him the Street Vladimir Cross.
In 1842, while working on mining and road-building projects in Moldavia, he fell ill and returned to France.
In 1844 the Société de Géographie awarded him their Gold Meda In Turkey, he wrote reports on trade in the Bosporous and the Black Sea before proceeding to Persia.
In June 1847, they sailed to Trabzon, entering Persia through Diyarbakir and Lake Van that November. In February 1848, he finally arrived in Tehran after suffering from cholera and ophthalmia on the way.
With the help of the French ambassador, he met Mohammad Shah Qajar who entrusted him with studying the feasibility of a canal bringing water from the River Shahrood to the Savojbolagh plain.
Hommaire left for Mazandaran in May 1848 where he carried out surveys including a study of the Mosque of Varamin. He returned to Tehran to complete his research notes and then travelled to Isfahan. He arrived there seriously ill and died two weeks later on 29 August 1848.
French Academy of Sciences]
The following year he became a member of the Société de Géographie and the Société géologique and published a number of scientific papers.