Nollet
Nollet, Abbe Jean-Antoine
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Electricity experiments
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 19 November 1700, at Pimprez, Oise, France
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 24 April 1770, at Paris, France. Aged 69
DISCIPLINE: Physicist
FIELD: Physics
LANGUAGE: French
PARENTS: ?
SIBLINGS: ?
SPOUSE: None
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: Clermont College; University of Paris
MAJOR WORK: 'Lecons de physique experimentale' (6 vols), 1743-48
LIFE AND TIMES: After graduating in theology Nollet effectively suspended his clerical career, and entered upon the full-time study of science. In 1728 he joined the Societe des Arts, a group which included La Condamine*.
\During his short membership, Nollet made many important scientific contacts in Paris, and from 1731 to 1735 he assisted the Academicians Dufay and Reaumur* , ranging from the study of the anatomy of insects, to investigations in the fertilization of frogs, thermometry, pneumatics, phosphorescence, magnetism and electricity.
In 1734, Nollet accompanied Dufay on a trip to England, where he was elected
a member of the Royal Society, and to Holland, where he met a number of
Dutch scientists, including Petrus van Musschenbroek* and the Newtonians
Desaguliers* and s'Gravesende*.
On his return to France in 1735, Nollet was forced to finance his scientific endeavours by making scientific instruments. He proved so adept at this that by 1738 he was receiving orders from Voltaire*.
In 1735 Nollet also began his famous and hugely successful course of lectures in experimental physics, which he continued until 1760. In these lectures, Nollet gave a comprehensive treatment of contemporary physics accompanied by carefully orchestrated
demonstrations (performed on some 350 different instruments) of each
experiment or phenomenon under discussion.
The entire lecture course was
then published in the six-volume 'Lecons de physique experimentale' (1743-48), often reprinted, with excellent descriptions and illustrations of apparatus, some of which he himself designed - for example, his pyrometer (used in the study of heat) and his model fire pump (used in lessons on the mechanics of fluids).
By the late 1730s Nollet had become an important scientific figure in France. In 1739 he entered the Academie des Sciences as "adjunct mechanician" and was called to Turin by the King of Sardinia to instruct the Duke of Savoy, and to furnish the instruments needed for the new chair of physics at the University of Turin. Then, in 1841 he was invited to lecture at the Academie Royale de Bordeaux, where he remained until 1844, when he was called to Versailles to instruct the Crown Prince in experimental science, and was soon afterwards appointed a teacher to the royal family.
During the 1740s Nollet continued his lectures and demonstrations, and his own research. From 1745 he immersed himself in electrical phenomena, during this year developing his inaccurate but influential theory of electricity as the movement in opposite directions of
two currents of fluid producing repulsion or attraction on the surface of charged bodies. With the publication of this theory (in vogue for some time until it was replaced by that of Franklin*) Nollet immediately became the leader of the European electricians.
In the late 1740s he consolidated this position by publishing several papers and two books, and by a trip across the Alps to Italy (paid for by the government), when he debunked electrical cures being advertised by Italian doctors.
He was one of the first to recognize the importance of sharp points on conductors in the discharge of electricity (later applied practically in the construction of the lightning-rod by Franklin), and also studied the conduction of electricity in tubes, in smoke, vapours, steam, and the influence of electric charges on evaporation, vegetation, and animal
life.
In 1746, having heard of the simultaneous invention of the Leyden Jar the previous year by Musschenbroek and Kleist* (which meant that for the first time an electrical charge could be stored) Nollet discharged a Leyden jar in front of King Louis XV by sending current through a chain of 180 Royal Guards.
In another demonstration, Nollet used wire made of iron to connect a row of some 200 Carthusian monks more than a kilometre long. When an attached Leyden jar was discharged, the white-robed monks reportedly leapt simultaneously into the air.
Then, in 1747, Nollet constructed one of the first electrometers – in which the electrical charge of a body was measured by the angle of deflection of the supporting thread of a pith ball, writing up his findings in his important work 'Recherches sur les causes particulières des phénomenes électriques' (1749)
Aside from his electrical investigations, in 1748 Nollet first described the osmosis of water through a bladder into alcohol. This investigation marks the starting-point of the discipline of biophysics, which first involved the study of diffusion gradients and osmotic pressure (the pressure that develops in a solution separated from a solvent by a membrane permeable only to solvent): two forces responsible for the passive flow of matter in
living organisms.
In 1753, Nollet was appointed professor of experimental physics at the Royal College of Navarre (the first such post at the University of Paris), and in 1761 he began to teach at the school of artillery at Mézières (where one of his students was Coulomb*) and at the technical school at La Fere. Nollet was also a member of the Institute of Bologna and of the Academy of Sciences of Erfurt.
ASSESSMENT: Nollet played an important part in the popularization of experimental science in France.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Gramme* developed his ideas
ONELINER: J-A Nollet, early electricity experimenter
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DSB, EB
Catholic Encyclopedia