Joseph Lakanal

Born

14 July 1762

Died

14 February 1845

A teaching member of the Doctrinaires elected to the Convention for the Ariège, Lakanal voted for the king’s death and sat on, and later presided over, the Committee of Public Instruction. He was rapporteur of the decrees reorganising the Jardin des Plantes as the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, establishing literary and artistic property in July 1793 and creating the École normale, and of the primary-school law of November 1794 that carries his name, which was superseded within a year by Daunou’s. His own account of these years, published in 1838, has been shown to overstate his part and to alter the texts he reprinted; several of the measures he claimed had been drafted by Sieyès, Grégoire or Garat. He emigrated to the United States after Waterloo and returned to France in 1837.

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