Reaumur
Reaumur, Rene-Antoine Ferchault de
ACHIEVEMENTS:
First detailed scientific study of bees.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
28 February 1683, La Rochelle, France
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
17 October 1757, Saint-Julien-du-Terroux, France. Aged 74
DISCIPLINE:
Natural historian
FIELD:
Natural history
LANGUAGE:
French
PARENTS:
Father: Rene Ferchault
Mother: Genevieve Bouchel
SIBLINGS:
1 brother: Jean-Honore
SPOUSE:
None
CHILDREN:
None
EDUCATION:
Law school, Bourges
MAJOR WORK: (1734-42) "A Natural History of Insects"
LIFE AND TIMES:
After three years of law study, Reaumur went to Paris and met a relative who was studying mathematics at the Academy of Sciences. Reaumur joined him and by 1708 had become as assistant at the Academy of Sciences. He was all set for a brilliant career in mathematics when in 1709 he read a paper on the growth of animal shells and from then on became a polymath.
In 1710 Louis XIV* commanded Reaumur to write an encylopedia detailing the industrial and natural resources of France. Reaumur began work on this project in 1713 and his research ranged over a huge area of subjects. During his investigation of the iron and steel industry he conducted experiments in steel production and attempted to produce a non-brittle cast iron. He improved the techniques used in the industry and built the first cupola furnace for melting gray iron.
He studied the tinplate industry, which had become almost defunct in France and in a paper to the Academy of Sciences he described the basic industrial process, hoping that this would lead to the establishment of entrepreneurial ventures in tinplating.
He examined the chemical composition of Chinese porcelain which was in great demand in Europe and although he did not discover the nature of the substances used by the Chinese, he produced a formula for making soft-paste porcelain from glass. He also invented a type of crystalline ceramic that has been used in the twentieth century to protect rocket nosecones from overheating.
He invented a thermometer with a single fixed point in which a degree was defined by volume, instead of linearly as in the scale developed by Fahrenheit*. Fahrenheit's thermometer was only accurate if the inside diameter of the hollow thermometer tube was absolutely regular, and Reamur's device was an attempt to resolve this. His thermometer was not particularly useful but the Reaumur scale was adopted over most of Europe except in Scandinavia, Holland and Britain.
Reaumur's most valuable work was as a natural historian. He discovered that crayfish regenerate lost appendages; he isolated gastric juice and conducted experiments into its role in the digestion of food in carnivorous birds; and he discovered that the purple dye used by the Romans was made from a substance produced by a particular species of mollusc. He made a fabric from spiders' silk and gave the Duke of Noailles a pair of spider-silk gloves.
His most remarkable work was in entymology (the study of insects), in which classification Reaumur included small invertebrates such as spiders and worms, and also molluscs, crustaceans, reptiles and amphibians, even crocodiles. Perhaps influenced by his work on the industrial encyclopedia, Reaumur classified the insects by ethology (behaviour) rather than morphology (shape), and he described in detail their industries and occupations.
He was at pains to point out the economic value of research into this area, and showed silk, wax, honey, lacquer and cochineal as useful products of the industry of insects. He also investigated the best ways of eradicating insects.
Reaumur was one of the first to undertake extensive quantitative research into insects, and his investigations into bee behavior are still widely read. He discovered, for example, that he could anesthetize bees by putting their hive in cold water, so that he could count the bees and separate them into categories. He also counted cells and larvae, weighed a swarm of bees, measured the temperature of the hive and studied the geometric form of the honey cells.
He recorded the number of bees leaving the hive, the amount of pollen they returned with, and then estimated the weight of a day's honey. He kept track of individual bees by dyeing them. He discovered that all hives have only one queen bee and that any other queen introduced will be rejected or killed; and that if a queen is removed from a colony of bees the colony can only survive by creating a new queen which is accomplished by feeding royal jelly to a developing larva.
In 1734 he published the first of six volumes of his "Memoires pour servir a l'histoire des insectes" (1734-42, "Notes Serving as a Natural History of Insects"). Reaumur planned to write ten volumes but gave up the project after 1742, possibly because he was put off by the popularity of his rival Buffon*.
Rs, among them Bonnet*, and he was in contact with scientists all over Europe. He died in 1757 after falling off his horse while returning from Mass on his estate in Maine.
ASSESSMENT: Reaumur's lasting contribution was his work on entymology
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: His ceramic work related to that of Wedgwood*.
An assistant was Nollet*
Koenig* visited him
ONELINER: R-A F de Reaumur, 18th-century bee expert
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Middleton, WE Knowles, A History of the Thermometer and its use in Metereorology, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1966
DSB