BIOT, JEAN BAPTISTE (1774-1862)

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 957 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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BIOT, JEAN BAPTISTE (1774-1862) , French physicist, was born at Paris on the 21st of April 1774. After serving for a short time in the artillery, he was appointed in 1797 professor of mathematics at Beauvais, and in 1800 he became professor of physics at the College de France, through the influence of Laplace, from whom he had sought and obtained the favour of reading the proof sheets of the Mecanique celeste. Three years later, at an unusually early age, he was elected a member of the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Sciences, and in 1804 he accompanied Gay Lussac on the first

balloon

BALLOON

ascent undertaken for scientific purposes. In 18o6 he was associated with F. J. D. Arago, with whom he had already carried out investigations on the refractive properties of different gases, in the measurement of an arc of the meridian in Spain, and in subsequent years he was engaged in various other geodetic determinations. In 1814 he was made chevalier and in 1849

commander

COMMANDER

, of the Legion of Honour. He failed in his ambition of becoming perpetual secretary of the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Sciences, but was somewhat consoled by his election as a member of the French Academy in 1856. He died in Paris on the 3rd of February 1862. His researches extended to almost every branch of physical science, but his most important

work

WORK

was of an optical character. He was especially interested in questions relating to the polarization of light, and his observations in this field, which gained him the Rumford medal of the Royal Society in 1840, laid the foundations of the polarimetric

analysis

ANALYSIS (Gr. avci and Meta, to break up into parts)

of sugar.
Biot was an extremely prolific writer, and besides a

great

GREAT

number of scientific memoirs,

biographies

BIOGRAPHIES

, &c., his published works include: Analyse de la mecanique celeste de M. Laplace (18or) ; Traite analytique des courbes et des surfaces du second degre (1802); Recherches sur l'integration des equations differentielles'partielles et sur les vibrations des surfaces (1803); Traite de physique (1816) ; Recueil d'observations geodesiques, astronomiques et physiques executees en Espagne et Ecosse, with Arago (1821); Memoire sur la vraie constitution de l'atmosphere terrestre (1841); Traite elementaire d'astronomie physique (18o5); Recherches ,sus.
plusieurs points de l'astronomie egyptiennc (1823); Recherches sur l'ancienne astronomie chinoise (184o); Etudes sur l'astronomie indienne et sur l'astronomie chinoise (1862); Essai sur l'histoire generale des sciences pendant la Revolution (1803); Discours sur Montaigne (1812); Lettres sur l'approvisionnement de Paris et sur le commerce des grains (1835); Melanges scientifiques et litteraires (1858).
His son, EDOUARD CONSTANT BIOT (1803-1850), after amassing a competence from railway engineering, turned to,the study of Chinese subjects, and published Causes de l'abolition de l'esclavage ancien en occident (1840); Dictionnaire des noms anciens et modernes des villes et des arrondissements compris daps l'empire chinois (1842); Essai sur l'histoire de l'instruction publique en Chine et de la

corporation

CORPORATION (from Lat. corporare, to form into a
body
- BODY
, corpus, corporis)

des lettres (1847); Memoire sur les colonies militaires et agricoles des chinois (185o).

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