Thomas François Dalibard
Thomas François Dalibard (* 1703 in Crannes-en-Champagne , † 1779 in Paris ) was a French naturalist.
Dalibard was a botanist and was the first in France to use the Carl von Linné nomenclature system. Dalibard did this in his Florae Parisiensis of 1749. As a thank you, Linnaeus named a Canadian blackberry after Dalibard.
Dalibard translated the Experiments and Observations published in London in 1751 (as Expériences et observations sur l'électricité , Paris 1752, 2nd edition 1756) by Benjamin Franklin . This happened at the suggestion of the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon , to whom Franklin sent a copy. Franklin's investigations into the possibility of lightning rods in particular attracted a great deal of attention in Europe. Dalibard himself undertook an experiment suggested by Franklin on May 10, 1752 in Marly-la-Ville : A pointed, long metal rod, insulated from the ground, struck sparks during a thunderstorm. He left the execution to a retired former dragoon.
The first edition of his translation of Franklin's book also contained a brief history of the experiments on electricity in France before Franklin, the second edition a section on his own experiments following Franklin.
Dalibard also repeated an experiment by Franklin on the influence of electricity on magnetism. Franklin found that electricity could sometimes reverse the polarity of magnetized iron needles, but thought this was a coincidence and believed that electricity and magnetism had nothing to do with each other. Dalibard, on the other hand, mistakenly believed that he had found a connection when the experiment was repeated.
He also translated the history of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega , published in Paris in 1774 (Histoire des Incas, rois du Pérou).
Fonts (selection)
- Florae Parisiensis prodromus ou Catalog des plantes qui naissent dans les environs de Paris, 1749
literature
- Pierre G. Hamamdjian: Dalibard, Thomas François , Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Scribners, Volume 3, p. 535
Individual evidence
- ↑ Life data according to Hamamdjian, Dict. Sci. Biogr. The French national library gives 1709 to 1799, BNF .
- ^ E. Philip Krider, Benjamin Franklin and Lightning Rods, Physics Today, January 2006, p. 42
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dalibard, Thomas François |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French naturalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1703 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Crannes-en-Champagne |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1779 |
| Place of death | Paris |