Jean-Antoine Nollet

Jean-Antoine Nollet.

Jean-Antoine Nollet (Abbé Nollet, born November 19, 1700 in Pimpré near Noyon , † April 24, 1770 in Paris ) was a clergyman and the first French professor of experimental physics.

Life

The son of a poor farmer, Nollet studied theology and philosophy in Beauvais and Paris and then was a deacon in the Diocese of Noyon. During his studies he also came under the influence of the physicist René de Réaumur , who made his laboratory available to him. He undertook experiments mainly on the then still new theory of electricity. In 1734 he undertook a trip to the Netherlands and London with the physicist Abbé du Fay (also written as Dufay), where he was accepted into the Royal Society . For a long time he gave public lectures on experimental physics in Paris. Among other things, he demonstrated in 1746 to the later King Louis XV. the effect of electricity through the static charge (with a Leyden bottle ) from 180 guardsmen and then in Paris to 700 Carthusian monks, whom he connected electrically with cables and to his satisfaction was able to observe the instantaneous effect of the electricity. At the invitation of the Duke of Savoy, he set up a physics professorship in Turin. In 1739 he became a mechanic (Mécanicien adjoint) and in 1742 a member of the Academy of Sciences . From 1753 he was professor of physics at the Collège de Navarre in Paris and from 1761 professor at the artillery and engineering school in Mézières . From 1757 he was a retiree of the Academy of Sciences. From 1767 he also taught the king's children.

He strongly polemicized against the lightning rod developed by Benjamin Franklin , although even before Franklin he spoke out in favor of the similarity of an electric spark and lightning. As a result of these polemics, the first French lightning rod was not installed on the roof of the Academy of Sciences in Dijon until three years after Nollet's death. He wrote a multi-volume textbook on experimental physics that has been translated into several languages.

Nollet is considered to be the discoverer of osmosis (1748) and he also invented an electroscope . The name Leiden bottle comes from Nollet , which he named after Pieter van Musschenbroek from Leiden , whom he believed to be the inventor. Nollet is also said to have been one of the first to kill living beings (sparrows) with electricity from a Leiden bottle.

He was the great-uncle of the Belgian inventor Floris Nollet .

Fonts

• Lecons de physique experimentale, 6 volumes, 4th edition 1754–1764, English edition London 1752, Italian Naples 1780, German translation: Lectures of the theory of nature confirmed by experiments, Erfurt 1773–1776, 2 volumes
• L'art des expériences, ou avis aux amateurs de la physique sur le choix, la construction et l'usage des instruments, sur la preparation et l'emploi des drogues qui servent aux expériences, 2nd edition Paris 1770
• Essai sur l'electricité des corps, Paris 1746
• Recherches sur les causes particulieres des phénoménes électriques, Paris 1749
• Lettres sur l'électricité, Paris 1753
• Cours de physique expérimentale, Paris 1735
• Program ou Idée générale d'un cours de physique expérimentale, Paris 1738

literature

• Jean Torlais Un physicien au siècle des lumières: L´Abbé Nollet 1700-1770 , Paris, Sipuco, 1954, new edition Argueil, Jonas Editeur 1987
• Barbara Stafford Artistic Science: Enlightenment, Entertainment, and the Decline of Visual Education , Amsterdam, Dresden 1998
• Lewis Pyenson, Jean Francois Gauvin: The art of teaching physics- the 18th century demonstration apparatus of Jean Antoine Nollet, Quebec 2002

Web links

• Biography at electrosuisse (PDF; 30 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ site to Nollet at Spark Museum
2. ↑ Poggendorff, biographical handbook for the Gesch. der exacten Wissenschaft, Leipzig 1863, vol. 2
3. ^ Hoppe history of electricity , Barth, Leipzig, 1881, p. 100