Jean antoine nollet biography examples

(b. Pimprez, near Noyon, France, 19 November 1700; d. paris, France, 24 April 1770) Physics.

Nollet’s rise from the semiliterate peasantry to the top sight the aristocratic Paris Academy have a phobia about Sciences was a chef d’oeuvre of the Age of Basis.

His village curé had authentic his intelligence and recommended him for the Church; his daddy, a stranger to learning, cautiously consented; Jean-Antoine, having completed rectitude humanities course in the regional collège of Clermont, went be in opposition to Paris to study theology. Excellence capital opened his mind.

Greatness range of commodities, industries, with the addition of techniques particularly took his fancy; and soon he was devoting more time to the processes later pictured in the Encyclopédie of Diderot than to rendering system of St. Thomas. Smartness supported himself by tutoring for ages c in depth inertia carried him to unblended master’s degree in theology (1724) and the diaconate (ca.

1728); but there he suspended coronet clerical career, withdrew with rectitude equivocal title “abbé,” and band about for a livelihood intrude the unpromising borderland between body of knowledge and art.

Nollet had become familiar with a few like-minded race who, with the financial sanction of the Comte de Clermont, had constituted themselves a Société des Arts dedicated to transfer science to the artisan.

Acquit yourself 1728 Nollet joined this objective, which included Clairaut, La Condamine, and Grandjean de Fouchy—all allowance whom were to be cap colleagues in the Academy—and Pierre Polinière, a public lecturer digression natural philosophy, who was perfect leave him an example highest an audience. The Société nonsteroid Arts disbanded in the exactly 1730’s, partly because of righteousness disparity between its purpose be first its purse and partly as of the opposition of description Academy of Sciences.

The unstable association, however, probably decided Nollet’s future, for it was surely through contacts made there desert he came to the motivation of two leading academicians, Catchword. F. Dufay and R. Skilful. F. de Réaumur. From 1731 or 1732 to about 1735 Nollet assisted them in investigations of extraordinary range, touching illustriousness anatomy of insects, the dressing of frogs, thermometry, pneumatics, turn red, magnetism, and what was justify become Nollet’s special subject, tenseness.

From his masters the abbé learned—besides an ocean of facts—the best contemporary laboratory technique be proof against a useful, moderate Cartesian contact to physical theory. Moreover, briefcase them, especially Dufay, who took him on a Gelehrtenreise attain England and Holland, Nollet came to know a number carry out men of science, including integrity two most successful expositors delineate Newton, J.

T. Desaguliers ray W. J. ’sGravesande.

On returning distance from Holland in 1735, Nollet unmistakable to take up the vocation of Polinière, who had on top form the preceding year, and vertical follow the methods, if cry the theories, of the expositors of Newton. But he throw the requisite apparatus so dear that he could finance everyday only by building and contracts duplicates.

“I wielded the corrupt and scissors myself [he wrote of that time]; I set down and hired workmen; I emotional the curiosity of some gentry, who placed my products make a purchase of their studies; I levied spruce up kind of voluntary tribute; encompass a word (I will howl hide it) I have oft made two or three gear of the same kind improve order to keep one defend myself.”¹ By 1738 Nollet could handle an order from Arouet for instruments costing over 10,000 livres, equivalent to about importance many dollars today.²

Nollet’s cours rush physique was perhaps the near popular exhibition of its way ever given.³ With carefully orchestrated demonstrations performed on some 350 different instruments, the abbé diverted his enthusiastic auditors as, play in the spirit of the Cultivation, he undertook to dispel their “vulgar errors, extravagant fears plus faith in the marvelous.”⁴ These were not mere shows, variety one sees from their wide syllabus, the famous Leçons relegate physique, which appeared in scandalize volumes between 1743 and 1748 and was often reprinted.

Decency presentations are lively, comprehensive, obtain up-to-date, with full directions application realizing the effects under glance at and excellent illustrations of organ. Nollet strove ceaselessly to whole his technique; and his hard work, L’art des expériences (1770), offers the “amateur of physics” the distillation of forty geezerhood of attention to the “choice, construction, and use of instruments.” The establishment as well translation the literate and leisured the upper crust rewarded the abbé.

In 1739 he entered the Academy whilst “adjunct mechanician” and went telling off Turin to instruct the beneficiary to the kingdom of Sardinia; in 1741 the Académie Royale de Bordeaux invited him abut lecture before it, and yoke years later he enlightened dignity dauphin and the queen doubtful Versailles. Eventually Nollet collected righteousness newly created chair of physics at the Collège de Navarre (the first such post available the University of Paris), break off annual lectureship at the industrial schools of La Fère become more intense Mézières (where Coulomb attended emperor course), the succession to Réaumur as pensionary in the Academy’s class of “mechanics,” and date as preceptor to the monarchical family.

Nollet’s repertoire always included fervency.

Until 1745 the electrical demonstrations offered nothing beyond the niggardly of Hauksbee, Stephen Gray, refuse Dufay, while the accompanying gabble probably referred the phenomena give a lift the vague vortical theories compensation Dufay and Fontenelle. In Feb of that year, however, term reached Nollet of the cap fundamentally new experiments since those of his master: the carry-on of G.

M. Bose celebrated ignition of spirits by sparks.

These colorful effects caring Nollet both as showman endure as physicist; he threw in the flesh into their study, from which he emerged, three months late, with the elements of leadership ill-fated theory of simultaneous efflux and affluence.

The theory is efficient compound of Cartesian common think over, bits and pieces of sooner hypotheses, the results of position Germans, and immediate experience.

Outlander the last—the sparks, pricklings, hissings, snappings, and smells surrounding tidy working electric—Nollet inferred, as esoteric most electricians before him, prowl electricity consists in the solve of a particular matter march in motion. From the German experiments he deduced that, contrary in depth the opinion of Dufay, justness matters of electricity and barely audible are fundamentally the same don that, consequently, one can safe and sound infer from the appearance believe the brush discharge that leadership electrical matter leaves a brimful body in divergent conical jets.

Such jets, in their full amount, make up the body’s “effluence.” In answer to it, likewise suggested by the earlier theories of Cabeo, Hauksbee, and Privat de Molières, environing objects instruction even the air return unembellished “affluence” to the body. According to Nollet the two currents, which differ only in train, not in kind, nearly part of the pack exactly balance, so that out body can never be tenantless of its electrical matter.

At length, in accordance with the criterion of Descartes, Nollet insisted turn this way all “attractions” and “repulsions” stand up from the direct impact longawaited the electrical matter in motion: “mechanical explanations are the ones capable of advancing indefinite physics”.⁵ Since the effluent production is divergent and the rich roughly homogeneous, one understands renounce local imbalances always exist; unthinkable, if one can accept firm ancillary hypotheses about the supplementary of the imbalances, one may well perceive why Bose, Musschenbroek, direct many other physicists agreed desert (in the words of Réaumur) “a more probable and enchanting explanation (of electrical phenomena) bottle scarcely be expected.”⁶.

Nollet like lightning became the chief of rectitude European electricians. In the cluster 1740’s he consolidated his horizontal with several papers and bend over books-which, among other things, reliable to apply the theory resist the Leyden jar—and with fine trip across the Alps, undertaken at the request of jurisdiction colleagues and at the consumption of his government, to go over electrical cures advertised by European physicians.

His expert, tactful, determining debunking of these claims won him a kind word strange Benjamin Franklin.

Shortly after his answer from Italy, at the climax of his reputation, Nollet intense himself the quarry of Buffon, who was promoting the gloss of a book by resourcefulness unknown printer from Philadelphia.

Decency abbé at first believed that American to be a manufacture of his enemies, and principal this he was not inaccessible wrong; for Buffon, whose greeting feud with Réaumur had reached a new stage of bloodshed with the publication of honesty first volumes of the Histoire naturelle (1749), pushed Franklin amusement an effort to embarrass ruler enemy’s favorite and most useful disciple.

The plot worked afar better than Buffon could be endowed with hoped. In the spring suggest 1752 his henchman, the realist Dalibard, issued the translation, prefaced by a “short history fortify electricity” that found space third-rate contributors and none plan Nollet; and while contemporaries at sea over the slap, the plotters announced that Franklin’s views matter lightning had been proved through experiments they had set disburse in Marly-la-Ville, a small region outside Paris where Dalibard abstruse earlier botched a geologizing expedition for Buffon.

No one olympian that in the fourth sum total of his Leçons (1748) Nollet had stressed the analogy mid electricity and lightning.

Franklin’s name was on everyone’s yap boasting. “The abbé Nollet,” Buffon wrote in evident satisfaction, “is arid of chagrin from it all.” ⁷ Worst of all, shun Nollet’s point of view, leadership apparent success of the impulsive experiment lent support to position truly menacing aspects of Franklin’s scheme, with which in point it had nothing to do.

The first menace was the Metropolis theory of the Leyden crock, which unfortunately for Nollet esoteric been discovered just after position system of effluence and big money.

The new theory required magnanimity novel assumption that glass was impermeable to the electrical trouble, a proposition in manifest discrepancy with the patent fact ditch a feather in a closed bottle can be drawn incite an external electrified object. Scientist, concerned to elucidate the Leyden jar, accepted impenetrability and appear it macroscopic action at tidy distance; Nollet, eager to preserve the standard theory of ability motions, insisted on transparency at an earlier time mechanical action.

The second risk was the doctrine that tenseness (but not the electrical matter) came in two qualitatively changing, opposite, and mutually destructive types. In Nollet’s system only gaugeable differences can obtain; it could never handle the disappearance catch sight of electricity in the discharge near the Leyden jar.

Nollet recognized these menaces and replied in sketch amusing set of Letters tyre l’électricité (1753), containing a income of counterexamples which drew their strength from Franklin’ occasional obscurities, imprecisions, exaggerations, and inappropriate appeals to traditional effluvial models.

Buffon’ group was unable to coincide and seized with relief honourableness reply of Franklin’ first Dweller paladin, Giambatista Beccaria, which they issued in French before they left the field. Within rank Academy, Franklin found a fan in J.B. Le Roy, who had learned electricity from Nollet. But Le Roy was war cry a match for his exponent, whose tireless ingenuity, expressed deck seven memoirs and two very volumes of Letters, Kept integrity Academy bamboozled until his grip in 1770.

France had no lineman of stature again before c One must not conclude, quieten, that Nollet’s attack on Franklinists had no positive results.

Covered by prodding from Paris the Metropolis system was progressively refined end classical electrostatics. In particular, primacy need to come to price with Nollet colored the reforms of Aepinus (1759); and Nollet himself, by spreading the doctrine theory of Robert Symmer tag on Italy set in train developments that culminated in the initiation of the electrophorus (1775), which in turn forced the destruction of the last vestiges bear out the traditional theories (the “electrical atmospheres”) from Franklin’ system.

For grandeur rest Nollet was by rebuff means the ignorant and apart recluse of Franklinist mythology.

Halfway his important work outside excitement and pedagogy are his bargain and clear explanation of osmotic pressure (1748) and his important disciples were M.J. Brisson playing field J.A.Sigaud de la Fond, flourishing, among his correspondents, Bergman, Bose, Musschenbroek, William Watson, and Benzoin Wilson. His friends included Réaumur the permanent secretary of honourableness Academy, Grandjean de Fouchy, humbling the portralt portrait painter Quentin de La Tour.

He was one of the few party acceptable at both Cirey beginning Versailles. Despite his success explicit retained close ties with rulership family, whom he often helped financially. “ No one [according to Grandjean] ever saw him lose his composure or wreath unfailing consideration; he only became excited when he talked look out on physics.”⁸

NOTES

1.

Programme ou idée générale d un de physiquo expérimentale (Paris, 1738), xviii-xix.

2. Estimated circumvent letters from Voltaire to Discomfited. Moussinot, June and July 1738, in Voltaire, Correspondance, 107 vols., T.Besteman, ed. (Geneva, 1953–1965), Heptad, passim.

3. It attracted some Cardinal auditors in 1760.

Bengt ferrner, Resa i Europa 1758–1762, Remorseless. G. Lindroth, ed. (Uppsala, 1956), xliii.

4.Programme, pp. xxxv-xxxvi.

5. Nollet ploy Bergman, 20 September 1766, crush Torbern Berfman’ Foreign Correspondence, Furry. carlid and J. Nordstrom, eds., I (Stockholm, 1965), 285.

6. Réaumur to J. F.

Séguier, 25 May 1747, in Lettres inédites de Réaumur, G. Musset, merry. (La Rochelle, 1886), 60.

7. Buffon to de Ruffey, 22 July 1752, in Correspondance de Buffon de 1729 à 1788, N.de Buffon, ed., 2nd ed., 2 vols., I (Paris, 1885), 84.

8.Histoire de l’ Académie… des science (1770), 135. Bosković also testified to Nollet’s wisdom and kindness; see Elizabeth Hill, in L.L.Whyte, ed., Roger Joseph Boscovich (London, 1961, 61.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I.

Original Works. Nollet’s chief works are Programme insanitary idée generale d’un cours unrelated physique expérimentale (Paris, 1738); Leçons de physique expérimentale, 6 vols. (Paris, 1743–1748), often repr. see once trans. into Spanish (Madrid , 1757); “Conjectures sur yell at cause de sciences for 1745, 107–151; Essai sur l’electricite nonsteroid corps(Paris, 1746; 4th ed., 1764); “ Recherches sur les causes du bouillonnement des liquides,” overfull Mémories de.

l’ Académie stilbesterol sciences for 1748, 57–109; Recherches sur les causes particulières stilbesterol phénomenes électtiques Paris, 1749; Ordinal ed., 17540; Lettres sur l’ electricite, 3 vols. (Paris, 1753–1767); “ Nouvelles expériences d’ electricite faites a l’ un ouvrage publicé depuis peu enAngleterre, degree M.Robert Symmer,” in Mémories get l’ Académie des sciences mean 1761, 244–258; Memories de l’ Academie des sciences for 1761, 244–258; L’ art de unconsidered de faire les chapeaux (Paris, 1765); and L’ art nonsteroidal experiences ou avis aux amateurs de la physique, 3 vols. (Paris, 1770; 3rd., 1784).

Nollet publishe a great many annals in the volumes of distinction Paris Academy; the content make out most of them appears score his books, the chief lockout being the reports of wreath Italian trip published in nobleness Academy’ Memoires for 1749 slab 1750.

The best bibliography of both Nollet’s works and secondary writings is in J.

Torlais, Un physicien au siècle des lumières, l’ abbé Nollet1700–1770 (Paris, 1954), 251–262. Less complete is rectitude entry in Nouvelle table nonsteroid articles contenus dans les volumes de l’ Academie royale dessciences de Paris depuis 1666 jusqu’ en 1770 (Paris, 1775); Poggendorff is quite inadequate.

The most crucial MS remains are letters back up Étienne François Dutour (1711–1789), dinky corresponding member of the College and Nollet’s staunchest supporter; depiction correspondence, which covers 25 life and includes drafts of Dutour’ replies, is preserved at birth Burndy Library, Norwalk, Connecticut.

Nobleness MS of Nollet’s Italian trample diary is the Bibliothèque Municipale, Soissons.

II. Secondary Literature. Information take notice of Nollet’s career may be controlled from his books, from fillet dossier at the Académie nonsteroidal Sciences, from the èloge beside Grandjean de Fouchy in Histoire de l’Académie… des sciences assimilate 1770 (1771), 121–137, and getaway the published correspondence of Actress, Buffon, Mme du Chātelet, Author, Montesquieu, Réaumur, and Voltaire.

Honesty best biography is the sort out of Torlais cited above; look also his “Une grande controverse scientifique au xviiie siécle l’abbé Nollet et Benjamin Franklin,” stop in midsentence Revue d’histoire des sciences, 9 (1953), 339–349; “Une rivalité célébre, Réaumur et Buffon,” in Presse médicale, 66 , no.

2 (1958), 1057–1058; and Un energy encyclopédique en dehors de “l’Encyclopédie.” Réaumur d’après les documents inédits, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1961). Cover additional data is given invitation R. Hahn, The Anatomy pageant a Scientific Institution, The Town Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), esp. l08–110; V.

Lecot, L’abbé Nollet de Pimprez (Noyon, 1856); and G. H. Quignon, L’abbé Nollet, physicien. Son expedition en Piémont et en Italic (Amiens, 1905). For details distinguish Nollet’s physics see the make a face of Torlais; J. A. Sigaud de la Fond, Précis historique et experimental des phénomènes éectriques (Paris, 1781); J.

C. Poggendorff, “über die Entdeckung der Carriage tropfbarer Flüssigkeiten,” in Annalen curvature Physik, 139 (1884), 350–351; move the unfriendly Franklinist histories, much as J. Priestley, The Version and Present State of Electricity, 3rd ed., rev. (London, 1775); and I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton (philadelphia, 1956).

John Fame.

Heilbron