Jean Antoine Nollet

Jean Antoine Nollet , known as the Nollet abbot, born with Pimprez in the Noyonnais the December 19th 1700 and dead the April 24th 1770, is a Physicien French. He was associated with work of Of Fay and Réaumur. Nollet contributed much to spread in France the taste and the study of physics by clear and attractive exposures. It had especially dealt with the electricity: it designed the first electroscopes, made known in France the Leyden jar, of which it carried out a “dry” version, and had a presentiment of in the fires of Saint-Elme and the lightning the action of electricity.

Biography

Jean-Antoine Nollet is the son of humble farmers of the area of Compiegne. Raise noticed with the college of Beauvais, it will pay its studies of theology in Paris to enter like tutor at TAIT-end, clerk with the Town hall; it is there that, being interested in enamelling with the lamp, it succeeds in assembling a small laboratory. Its manual dexterity the fact of noticing by the Count de Clermont, which, entiché of sciences, the fact of entering in 1728 its Company of Arts, rather curious grouping which wanted to join together at the same time the Letters, Sciences and the Mechanical arts. It meets there, inter alia, a young mathematician wonder of the name of Alexis Claude Clairaut, like Condamine, the large clock and watch makers Julien Roy and Jean-Philippe Rameau, and finally Fontenelle.

With 1730 to 1732, it is associated with research of the superintendent of Fay, specialist in electricity, one of the two larger electricians of the beginning of the 18th century with the English Stephen Gray. Dufay proposes in Nollet to accompany it in England, which allows Nollet, like it says it itself, to acquire a more exact and more unquestionable knowledge of the method, processes and instruments of the applied science.

It meets in London John Theophilus Desaguliers, wire of Pasteur emigrated of La Rochelle, become demonstrator of Newton to the Royal Society, directing the famous experiments on the light and the colors. Astonishing meeting, known as Jean Torlais, because the two characters were as dissimilar as possible. One was of high size, other broad and massive one. One was abbot, other Pasteur. One all was devoted to the Church and the Crown. The other had rather strong reasons of their wanting some. One was Cartesian, the other Newtonian one. They in common had only their difficult beginnings and their current passion for experimental physics. Nollet dismounts machines and makes profitable its curiosity. He sees the improvements immediately to be brought, the disadvantages to avoid. Desaguliers had already a long practice of this so new teaching. Nollet profits from it and is made appreciate in London, the crowning of its voyage being its election in Royal Society.

Meanwhile, he sees himself entrusting, in 1733, the direction of the laboratory of Réaumur. One needed skilful hands to carry out the projects of this last, to carry out the often complicated experiments that it imagined and to build the instruments necessary; this mission, it is Nollet which fills it during many years, improving the thermometer in particular. It is him which with the idea of the calibration of the tubes and chooses the melting ice like fixed point.

Two years later, Nollet leaves for the Netherlands, where it meets Pieter van Musschenbroek, Willem Jacob 'S Gravesande and Jean Allamand. The relations which it with them, prolonged by a followed correspondence, will have an enormous effect on the future of the applied science in France.

The Nollet abbot had opened since 1735 in Paris a course of experimental physics whose success was extraordinary and whose listeners were men and women of any age and all conditions. It should be said that, as Bernard Maitte wrote it, a public comparatively numerous for the time received there a good education of an intelligent clergy.

It was necessary to break with the routine, to make the new one in pedagogy. In March 1738, Nollet makes appear the work entitled Programme or General Idea of a Course of Experimental Physics with a reasoned catalog of the instruments which are used for the experiments . It reflected much before undertaking this work. For him, experimental physics is not “a vain assembly of nonfounded reasoning or chimerical systems”. The conjectures are put at the secondary row. But it much read and travelled. He realized that a great number of instruments is necessary. He knows in addition that the workmen are not accustomed to building them, by the very fact that their use in the colleges is rather restricted. To acquire from abroad? But which fortune would be enough there? To obtain with the expenses of the State? But does the abbot have the capacity necessary to venture similar request? Simplest and surest is to count on itself. Making profitable, once again, its natural dexterity, cultivated since childhood, it takes the file and the chisel, forms and informs of the workmen, pricks the curiosity of several lords who placed his works in their cabinets. It raises a species of voluntary contribution. It goes until manufacturing two or three instruments of the same species, so that there him remains one about it. Thus, through work, and not sparing his sorrow, the abbot overcomes these first difficulties and it can be to trust to say that to Paris, from now on, there is a laboratory where one builds all that is necessary to the experiments of physics. But would it have the approval of the public? Because he does not want to make these exercises a spectacle of pure recreation, with the manner of his precursors.

Experimental physics, owing to the fact that it is more certain, is more interesting; but it should be under the dependence of no philosophy. Nollet specifies its attitude clearly: he does not want to be slave of the authority, affected to be Newtonian in Paris and Cartesian in London. Not, he teaches a physics only established on sufficiently noted facts and firmly established. He draws aside the metaphysics questions systematically. Its method consists in choosing in each matter what there is, which is cleanest to be shown by experiments, then to expose again the progress achieved and to bring back all there that can to it be referred in arts and the machines. Thus the abstract principles better comparable because are intersected with experiments. Nollet, whose manual skill is extraordinary, took the practice to operate while speaking, and to even employ the words less that the exposure of the facts, endeavouring to at least use the algebra and the geometry.

April 24th, 1739, the royal Académie of sciences proposes to the king the nomination of the Nollet abbot, then 39 years old, like assistant - mechanic in the place of Buffon, become assistant botanist. Then it is called at the court of Turin to make a course of experimental physics there. In 1741, the Academy of Bordeaux, with Montesquieu at its head, decides to buy a cabinet of complete physique and to require of the Nollet abbot initially to govern the construction of the instruments, then, in a series of public lessons, to expose their operation and, by evidence in fact, to put at the range amateurs of all conditions the data of the principles of physics. Bordeaux is with the avant-garde of progress and this course of experimental physics appears well to have been one of the first of the kind made in province.

The eight first Leçons of experimental physics appear in 1743 in two volumes in Durand and four following volumes knew seven reprintings. They constitute the development of the program. It is in this book that it associates, the first seems it, the thunder and electricity. In fact, with died of Dufay, Nollet is being in France the man more qualified to take in hand the direction of research on electricity; it is under the impulse of the abbot Nollet, representative of the French, German and English physicists, that the teaching of experimental physics takes a truly international character, Europe being opposed to America, the school of Paris to that of Philadelphia.

Nollet, which, moreover, had discovered the Osmose in 1748, runs up initially against Thomas-François Dalibard, then with Benjamin Franklin on the theory of electricity and especially on the paternity of discovered electric origin of the lightning.

The inaugural lesson of the Nollet abbot, on Tuesday, May 15, 1753, at the time of the opening of the pulpit of experimental physics to the College of Navarre, mark triumph of this science. In the amphitheater especially built for the new course and where more than 600 people can take seat, Nollet the object of this physics specifies solemnly which is to know the phenomena of nature and to show the causes of them; it clarifies the discipline which it involves to go only obviously; he affirms the need for being polyglot, physics having become international, but proposes, shows and comments in French: henceforth the exercises of experimental physics will be done in this language, and either in Latin.

Not only Nollet had made experimental physics “a pleasure of amateurs and an entertainment with the mode”, but still the taste of the experiments had passed from the academies in the university, and the province did not want to be late any more on the capital. Jesuits and fathers of the Oratory, fathers of the Christian doctrines, fathers of Lazare Saint, around 1743, instituted courses of physics in their schools. Nollet announces in its foreword that the university of Rheims has an important collection of instruments; that with Montbeliard there is an additional course of physics, with Marseilles a room engine and the defense of theses of physics, with Bordeaux finally a school of physics. Pont-à-Mousson in 1759, Caen in 1762, Draguignan in 1765 will have in their colleges a pulpit of experimental physics. One will sell with the Sorbonne notebooks with figures of experimental demonstrations.

Nollet, named in the place of Réaumur to the Academy of Science in 1757, Académie that it soon will chair, as from 1758, takes the title and the function of Master of physics of the Children of France, which causes definitively to install experimental physics at the court of France.

It also formed part maintaining of the program of the artillery schools and the royal École of the genius of Wall, where Nollet, professor prestigious, after having had Lavoisier for pupil, has Gaspard Monge for assistance of physics, then for successor. Thus the XVIIIe century will have seen being born a new character, ancestor of the modern engineer, a technician knowing to apply mathematics to the problems of its art and having a scientific formation which soon will be with the service of the State. The Revolution will benefit then from this tendency by creating schools where scientific teaching wants to correspond to the needs for an economic structure in the course of pre-industrialization: Conservatory national of arts and trades, central School of public works, ancestor of the Polytechnic school, Collège de France, royal ex-College, and national Natural history museum of natural history, ex- Garden of the king.

The Nollet abbot still publishes in 1770 the Art of the experiments , three volumes which constitute its last work, in which it describes with precision and meticulousness the way of manufacturing the instruments. He popularizes the work of wood, metals, of glass, describing the necessary tools, the manner of making use of it, giving the means of preparing the colors, the varnishes, the ornaments.

With its method admirable, which is nothing to leave in vagueness and not to forget any operation which could embarrass the amateur, it is thus regarded as a precursor of technical education, in this XVIIIe century which was that of the good workmen. Died on April 4th, 1770 at 70 years, it will have as a successor with the college of Navarre Mathurin Jacques Brisson, nephew of the sister-in-law of Réaumur, of which he will be the demonstrator. Excel pedagog, Brisson will inherit moreover apparatuses Nollet, which it will resell with Boulogne in 1792; the cabinet will be seized with the Revolution and will be transported in 1799 with the Conservatoire national of arts and trades, where it is still, beside that of Charles, which was, after Nollet, the most prestigious popularizer of the end of the XVIIIe century, calculation intervening now much more often in the experiments than in the middle of the century: one quoted like a model famous marble billiards of the “citizen Charles”, rare assembly of remarkable things which made it possible its owner to propose with his friends problems of mechanics and ballistics that they solved jointly.

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