BERLOTY, BONAVENTURE. — French Jesuit and scientist, born in Lyon on 25 March 1856, died at Ksara on 10 October 1934. He entered religious life in 1874. He had taught the physical and mathematical sciences in the Catholic faculties of Angers and Lyon when, at the age of fifty, he was commissioned to establish in Syria an observatory attached to the University of St Joseph of Beirut. He set it up at Ksara in 1907 and, after the devastation of the World War, restored and enlarged it in 1919–20, directing its work chiefly toward seismological and meteorological research. Indeed, B. had been appointed director of Syria’s official meteorological service in 1920 and rendered valuable services in this field.
BIBL.: Bollettino della Soc. sismologica italiana, 33 (1935), pp. 76–79.
Edmondo Lamalle