Albertine Necker de Saussure

Albertine Adrienne Necker de Saussure (9 April 1766, in Geneva – 13 April 1841, in Mornex, on the Salève, near Geneva) was a Genevan and then Swiss writer and educationalist, and an early advocate of education for women.

Life Albertine Necker de Saussure was the daughter of the Genevan scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799), a noted physicist, geologist, meteorologist, and Alpine explorer, and Albertine-Amélie Boissier (1745-1817). Horace-Bénédict, believing that the schools of the day were inferior, taught his three children at home. She learned English, German, Italian, and Latin, and her father also trained her in science. Albertine "inherited a large share of her father's intellectual energy as well as of his enthusiasm for educational reform." She supported her father's schooling in her later writings. Although a Calvinist, her religious views were broadminded and tolerant.

In 1785, at age 19, Albertine married Jacques Necker (1757-1825), a captain in the French cavalry. He was the son of Louis Necker and the nephew and namesake of Louis XVI's finance minister, Jacques Necker. The French Revolution ended Necker's military career and, in 1790, he began teaching as a demonstrator in botany at the University of Geneva, a job he obtained because of his wife's surname. She has been compared to Mary Wollstonecraft for believing that single women must maintain themselves through education. but her scientific activity declined after her marriage.

Written works Albertine Necker de Saussure's literary work began relatively late in life, after her children were grown. In the first two volumes, in which she examines general education, she follows the child from birth to fourteen years old. The third volume is devoted to the education of women. Albertine believed that women's educational attainments were different from those of men because women did not have the same opportunities as men. and she sought to teach women to be unselfish but also to be able to make independent judgments. In addition, Albertine authorized a French translation of August Wilhelm Schlegel's Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809-1811).

Legacy

Albertine Necker de Saussure's work l'Education Progressive is acknowledged as an educational classic and was influential in nineteenth-century England. She was active in the Groupe de Coppet (Coppet group), a salon that flourished in the years between the French Revolution and the Swiss Restoration,

Family

Albertine Necker de Saussure and her husband, Jacques Necker, had four children. Albertine's grand-nephew, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), became an important linguist and student of semiotics.