Latteux, Docteur (1840-1916 )

Louis Artus Paul Latteux was born in Paris on August 4, 1840, the son of Louise Françoise Despagne and her first cousin, Louis François Latteux (1800-1874), an employee of the Bank of France, and the grandson of Claire Claudine Despagne and Louis Artus Latteux (died 1810), administrator of the Caisse d'Escompte du Commerce, and member of the Discount Council of the Bank of France. He received a medical education and developed an interest in collecting minerals and meteorites. In Dr. Dagincourt's Annuaire Géologique Universel (1886) he is listed as an M.D. for the Bank of France, and as a mineral collector and a collector of meteorites, living at no. 4, rue Jean-Lantier in Paris.

Docteur Latteux became a prominent and distinguished physician in Paris. His work on ovarian cancer was published in 1860 in Bulletin de la Société anatomique de Paris. He served as an assistant medical officer to the French Army in 1881, and later became a correspondent for the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris and was head of the Histology Laboratory at Broca Hospital, Laureat of the Faculté de Medecine of Paris, Laureat of the Academy of Medicine, and Officer of State Education. In 1887 he published the third edition of his Manuel de Technique Microscopique.

By 1913 Latteux's meteorite collection had grown to include 304 distinct falls and he had exchanged many meteorites with the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1915 his studies of the Widmanstatten patterns on etched nickel-iron meteorites were discussed by S. Meunier in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. Eventually he sold his meteorite collection to Jean Paul Louis Vésignié (1870-1954), one of France's greatest mineral collectors. His mineral collection was sold as well.

Dr. Latteux died in Paris on June 9, 1916.