Benjamin Nicolas Marie Appert, a French philanthropist, born in Paris in 1797. At the age of 18 he formed the idea of establishing schools for mutual instruction in the department of Le Nord, and applied the principle in the following year to military organizations, with such success that Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, minister of war, in 1818 appointed him professor of a normal school for officers and non-commissioned officers in Paris. Within three months 163 of these schools, with 20,000 pupils, were in full operation, and in the course of two years 100,000 soldiers had reaped the benefits of them. In 1822 he was imprisoned on a charge of favoring the escape of two political convicts. After his release he devoted several years to the improvement of the condition of prisons, and published a monthly Journal des prisons (1825-30). After the revolution of 1830 he became the queen's almoner and secretary general of the society of Christian morality. He was the author of several works on bagnios, prisons, criminals, and prison education, and a series of Voyages in various European countries for examination of their prisons.