Biographies of distinguished scientific men. First series

The present volume of the series of English translations of M. Arago's works consists of his own autobiography and a selection of some of his memoirs of eminent scientific men,...

In the mode of examination adopted at the Polytechnic School in 1804, which is always cited as being better than the present organization, room was allowed for the exercise of s...

When _my friend_ the robber of Cullera assured me that I had nothing to fear from his subordinates, he informed me at the same time that his authority did not extend north of Va...

Rodriguez immediately conferred secretly with the brave commander Damian. It was agreed between them that Damian should take the command of a half-decked boat, which the wind ha...

To enlist their good will, I also questioned them at length upon the subject of their village, on the work that they did there, on smuggling, their principal sources of employme...

I am about to report a curious fact, and one which shows that politics, which insinuate themselves and bring discord into the bosom of the most united families, had succeeded, s...

A determination, more exact than had been previously obtained, of the relation of the weight of air to the weight of mercury, had furnished a direct value of the coefficient of...

Eulogies, said an ancient authority, should be deferred until we have lost the true measure of the dead. Then we could make giants of them without any one opposing us. On the co...

From the year 1671 to the year 1758, the prize subjects proposed by the French Academy related to questions of religion and morality. The eloquence of the candidates had therefo...

It is evident, in many passages, that Bailly is himself surprised at the singularity of his own conclusions, and fears that his readers may rather regard them as jokes. He there...

They then submitted themselves to the experiments, but using an important precaution. "There is no individual," says Bailly, "in the best state of health, who, if he closely att...

The necessity of such a hypothesis evidently upset Mesmerism from its very foundations; yet the illuminati did not judge thus. All bodies became a focus of special emanations, m...

This ward was full of patients. The operations were performed in their presence. Bailly says, "We see there the preparations for the torment; there are heard the cries of the to...

Again, on the 20th of June, when the Members of the National Assembly, affronted at the Hall having been closed and their meetings suspended without an official notification, wi...

Among men of Marat's disposition, the wounds of self-love never heal. Without the hateful passions derived from this source, who would believe that an individual, whose time was...

The multitude was not content with murmuring; the moment that a favourable opportunity occurred, it went to the barriers and broke them down. These were reëstablished by the adm...

Imaginative and sensitive, the philosopher allowed his thoughts to centre too exclusively on the difficulties of the moment. He persuaded himself, from an excess of good-will, t...

Well, on the 16th of July, twelve persons had gone as a deputation to the municipality, in order to declare, according to law, that the next day, the 17th, numerous citizens wou...

Bailly had risen early, after having slept as usual, the sleep of the just. He took some chocolate, and conversed a long time with his nephew. The young man was a prey to despai...

If after having, from a sense of duty, expatiated upon anarchical, odious, and sanguinary scenes, the historian of our civil discords has the good fortune to meet on his progres...

1815. _Phil. Trans._, vol. cv.--A Series of Observations of the Satellites of the Georgian Planet, including a Passage through the Node of their Orbits; with an Introductory Acc...

On examining some pins' heads placed at a distance in the open air, with a three-foot telescope, Herschel could easily discern that those bodies were round, when the subtended a...

The nucleus was round and well determined. Some measures taken on the day when the nucleus subtended only an angle of a single second, gave as its real angle 6/100 of the diamet...

Let us now consider the action of a second force. Let us take into account the attraction which the sun exercises upon the moon, in other words, instead of two bodies, let us su...

Mathematical analysis has not served to represent in finite terms the values of the derangements which each planet experiences in its movement from the action of all the other p...

The phenomena of the tides, which an ancient philosopher designated in despair as _the tomb of human curiosity_, were connected by Laplace with an analytical theory in which the...

We have just found, conformably to the principles of mechanics, the forces with which the particles of the nebula were originally endued, in the movements of rotation and revolu...

The origin of this famous inequality may be best understood by reference to the mode in which the disturbing forces operate. Let P Q R, P' Q' R' represent the orbits of Jupiter...

When, at a later period, coalesced Europe launched against France a million of soldiers; when it became necessary to organize for the crisis fourteen armies, it was the ingeniou...

The establishment of the Normal School accordingly indicates the commencement of a veritable revolution in the study of pure mathematics; with it demonstrations, methods, and im...

Fourier quitted Egypt only with the last wreck of the army, in virtue of the capitulation signed by Menou. On his return to France, the object of his most constant solicitude wa...

We should have more difficulty in discovering the causes of the failure of a fourth competitor, Madame the Marchioness du Châtelet, for she also entered into the contest institu...

I should have yet a long course to pursue, if, after having pointed out some of those problems of which the condition of science enabled our learned colleague to give numerical...

Fourier was endowed with a constitution which held forth a promise of long life; but what can natural advantages avail against the anti-hygienic habits which men arbitrarily acq...