Charles-Gaspard de la Rive

Charles-Gaspard de la Rive

Charles-Gaspard de la Rive (born March 14, 1770 in Geneva , † March 18, 1834 ibid) was a Swiss chemist and psychiatrist .

biography

His parents were the lawyer Jean-Ami de la Rive and Jeanne-Elisabeth, b. Sellon. In 1794, during the Geneva Revolution , he was sentenced to death as a passionate freedom fighter and fled to Scotland with Alexander Marcet . In 1797 he received his doctorate in Edinburgh with his teacher John Allen (1771-1843) with the thesis Tentamen physiologicum inaugurale, de calore animali ... to the doctor of medicine. He shares Allen's view that animal body heat is based on the burning of food particles in the blood. He then practiced in London, traveled through England, visited various health institutions and returned to Geneva.

In 1801 he married Marguerite Adelaïde, the daughter of Jean-François Boissier. In the same year their son Auguste Arthur de la Rive was born. From 1802 to 1819 he was honorary professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Geneva Academy . In 1811 he became a doctor for the mentally ill in Geneva and was committed to the construction of a modern institution, which would last until 1838. In 1813 he became a member of the Provisional Council, 1814 to 1818 of the State Council, 1814 to 1832 of the Representative Council and 1817 to 1818 First Syndicus of Geneva.

In the summer of 1814 Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday were his guests, and later André-Marie Ampère . Around 1821 he sent Faraday a small apparatus with a floating wire loop that was very sensitive to the approach of a magnet and played an important role in Faraday's research. He also had the idea for a galvanometer that was based on the electrolytic decomposition of water and that the ampere used to check the state of charge of his voltaic columns.

From 1819 to 1834 he was honorary professor of general chemistry at the academy, and from 1823 to 1825 was its rector. He wrote articles on electricity and chemistry for the journal Bibliothèque britannique . He supported Humphry Davy's view on electrochemistry, John Dalton's atomic theory, and Jöns Jakob Berzelius ' idea of ​​definitive proportions.

Works

• Autograph Manuscript on Oersted's discovery of electro-magnetism. Geneva 1820

literature

• Isaac Benguigui: Trois physiciens genevois et l'Europe savante. Les De la Rive (1800-1920). Georg, Geneva 1991, ISBN 978-2-8257-0424-0 .
• Isaac Benguigui: Charles-Gaspard de la Rive (1770-1834), médecin aliéniste et physicien. In: Gesnerus . Vol. 42 (1985), H. 3/4, pp. 245-252, doi: 10.5169 / seals-521402 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vincent Barras: De la Rive, Charles-Gaspard. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz ., Accessed on July 31, 2013.
2. ↑ Listing of Bachas Scientific Ancestors ( Memento October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Charles-Gaspard de La Rive: Tentamen physiologicum inaugurale, de calore animali… Edinburgi 1797, OCLC 14858313 (dissertation).
4. ↑ datenschutz-praxis.de: De la Rive ( Memento from July 29, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
5. ^ Friedrich Steinle : Exploratory experiments . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-515-08185-2 , pp. 227 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
6. ↑ Michael Faraday: The Correspondence of Michael Faraday: 1811-December 1831, letters 1-524 . IET, 1991, ISBN 0-86341-248-3 , pp. 273 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
7. ^ Fritz Schiller, University of Regensburg: Andrè Marie Ampère's electrodynamics (PDF; 750 kB)
8. ↑ GENEALOGY DATABASE ENTRY: De La Rive, Charles Gaspard ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 8 kB)