Jean-Baptiste Biot

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Baptiste Biot
1804 balloon flight with Gay-Lussac

Jean-Baptiste Biot (born April 21, 1774 in Paris , †  February 3, 1862 ibid) was a French physicist and mathematician who studied the relationship between electrical current and magnetism ( Biot-Savart law ) in the early 19th century the rotation of polarized light when passing through optically active chemical solutions ( optical activity ).

life and work

His father was Joseph Biot († 1821) and came from Lorraine ( Lorraine ), his mother was Jeanne Decressy. Biot was supposed to take up a commercial profession and Joseph Biot sent his son to Le Havre to train with a merchant. A large part of his job there was copying letters. Biot volunteered for the army. He joined the French army in September 1792 and served in the artillery a. a. in the Battle of Hondschoote on September 8, 1793 during the First Coalition War . When he was ill, he went back to his parents and then to Paris. After some turbulence there, he was arrested as a deserter and began studying mathematics. He took the entrance exams for the École des Ponts et Chausées and was accepted in January 1794. He became friends with the engineer and mathematician Barnabé Brisson (1777-1828), through him Biot met his sister Françoise Gabrielle Brisson (1781-1851) and although Françoise Gabrielle was only 16 years old, they married in 1797. They had two children, Blanche Sainte Foy Biot (1799–1866) and Édouard Biot (1803–1850).

In 1797 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the École Centrale in Beauvais and in 1800 professor of physics at the Collège de France in Paris, and in 1809 professor of astronomy . He was one of the first members of the Société d'Arcueil and over time a member of all three Paris academies, such as the Académie des Sciences since 1800 .

On August 24, 1804, he and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac took a ride in a hydrogen balloon and reached an altitude of 4,000 m. On this occasion they both examined the earth's magnetic field and in particular its inclination . In 1807 he was mentioned in the Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Société d'Arcueil as one of the first nine founding members of the Société D'Arcueil . Biot was also active in geodesy and in 1807/08, together with François Arago, extended the degree measurement of long meridian arcs by Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre south to the Balearic Islands. In the north he extended it to the Shetland Islands from 1817-1818 .

With the Borda - pendulum apparatus he led 1,811 gravimetric measurements on the 45th parallel by. With the acceleration of gravity on Mont Cenis near Modane determined by Francesco Carlini , the vertical gravity gradient inside the mountain could be estimated in 1824 . To do this, Biot converted his measurement in Bordeaux to the position of Mont Cenis (both near the 45th parallel). In 1822 Biot was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1815 he was also a foreign member ("Foreign Member") of the Royal Society and an honorary member ( Honorary Fellow ) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

As a physicist, he discovered the birefringence of mica minerals , which is why the mineral biotite was named after him by the German mineralogist Hausmann . In his honor, the former cgs unit of electrical current was named with " Biot " ( unit symbol Bi), as well as a dimensionless number ( Biot number ) of thermodynamics . The Biot crater on the moon also bears his name.

In addition, he was honored for his scientific achievements by his admission as a foreign member in the Prussian order Pour le Mérite for science and the arts on August 17, 1850 . In addition, he had been a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences since 1820 and a foreign member from 1850 . The Bavarian Academy of Sciences , he belonged since 1820 as a foreign member.

Biot also did research on the history of natural sciences. Among other things, he wrote about Newton and the astronomy of the ancient Egyptians , Indians and Chinese. His son Édouard Biot (1803-1850) became a railway engineer and sinologist .

Works (selection)

Essai de géométrie analytique , 1826
  • Essai sur l'histoire générale des sciences pendant la Révolution française (1795–1803)
  • Traité analytique des courbes et des surfaces du second degré (1802)
  • Relation d'un voyage fait dans le département de l'Orne pour constater la réalité d'un météore observé à l'Aigle le 6 floréal at 11 (1803). Texts and comments on BibNum.
  • Mémoire sur les affinités des corps pour la lumière, et particulièrement sur les forces réfringentes des différens gaz, by MM. Biot et Arago (1806)
  • Essai de géométrie analytique, appliqué aux courbes et aux surfaces du second ordre (1805)
  • Recherches sur les réfractions extraordinaires qui ont lieu près de l'horizon (1810)
  • Traité élémentaire d'astronomie physique (1810)
  • Tables barométriques portatives, donnant les différences de niveau par une simple soustraction. Avec une instruction contenant l'histoire de la formule barométrique; et sa demonstration complète par les simples élémens de l'Algèbre; a l'usage des ingénieurs, des physiciens, des naturalistes, et de tous les voyageurs (1811) digitized
  • Recherches expérimentales et mathématiques sur les mouvemens des molécules de la lumière autour de leur center de gravité (1814)
  • Traité de physique expérimentale et mathématique . 1816; archive.org
  • Précis élémentaire de physique expérimentale . 1817; d'après ses cours de physique à la faculté des sciences de Paris; archive.org
  • Recueil d'observations géodésiques, astronomiques et physiques, exécutées par ordre du Bureau des longitudes de France en Espagne, en France, en Angleterre et en Écosse, pour déterminer la variation de la pesanteur et des degrés terrestres sur le prolongement du méridien de Paris ( 1821)
  • Recherches sur plusieurs points de l'astronomie égyptienne appliquées aux monumens astronomiques trouvés en Égypte (1823)
  • Notions élémentaires de statique (1829)
  • "Mémoire sur plusieurs points fondamentaux de mécanique chimique", Mémoires de l'Académie royale de l'Institut de France [= Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences ], t. 16, 1838, pp. 229-396. Consultable on Gallica .
  • Mémoire sur la vraie constitution de l'atmosphère terrestre, déduite de l'expérience, avec ses applications à la mesure des hauteurs par les observations barométriques et au calcul des réfractions (1841)
  • Mémoire sur le zodiaque circulaire de Dendérah (1844)
  • Traité d'astronomie physique (6 volumes, 1850)
  • Le Tcheou-li, ou Rites des Tcheou, traduit pour la première fois du chinois par feu Édouard Biot (1851)
  • Mélanges scientifiques et littéraires (1858)
  • Études sur l'astronomie indienne et sur l'astronomie chinoise (1862)

Web links

Commons : Jean-Baptiste Biot  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genealogy by FG ​​Brisson
  2. ^ Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 9, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The Order Pour le Merite for Science and the Arts. The members of the order . Volume I (1842-1881), p. 146, Gebr. Mann-Verlag, Berlin, 1975
  4. ^ Members of the previous academies. Jean Baptiste Biot. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on February 23, 2015 .
  5. ^ Member entry of Jean-Baptiste Biot at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 2, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Biot, Jean-Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1862
Place of death Paris