Chemist and physicist, b. at Aachen, 21 July, 1810; d. in Paris, 19 Jan., 1878. Being left an orphan at the age of eight he was soon obliged to work in order to provide for himself and his sister. Up to the age of eighteen he worked as a clerk in a drapery establishment in Paris, but made use of all his spare time in studying, until he was received at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1830.In 1832 he entered the School of Mines, was graduated, and in 1835 he was attached to the chemical laboratory of the school, becoming professor and adjunct director in 1838, and remaining until his call to the chair of physics at the Collège de France. In 1843 he was commissioned by the Government to investigate the properties of steam and to obtain numerical data that should be of value to the steam engineer. The results were published in 1847, as vol. XXI of the "Mémoires" of the Academy of Sciences.In 1852 he became the Director of the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, where he continued his experiments until his laboratory, instruments and papers were destroyed during the Franco-German War, in 1871. This, together with the loss of his talented son, a well-known painter, broke his spirit, and a stroke of apoplexy in 1873 was followed by years of long, slow agony.
