Curated category
French fellows of the Royal Society
- Voltaire"This is no time to make new enemies." Those words are attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan.
- Joseph-Louis LagrangeJoseph-Louis Lagrange was born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin on the 25th of January 1736, the firstborn of eleven children.
- Claude Louis BertholletClaude Louis Berthollet spent decades arguing a point that every other leading chemist of his era believed was wrong. He was born on the 9th of December 1748…
- Louis PasteurOn the 6th of July 1885, Louis Pasteur faced a choice that could have ended in his prosecution. A 9-year-old boy named Joseph Meister had been badly mauled…
- Antoine LavoisierOn the 8th of May 1794, in Paris, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was guillotined alongside 27 co-defendants, at the age of 50.
- Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré was born on the 29th of April 1854 in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy, and by the time he died on the 17th of July 1912, he had touched…
- Joseph FourierJoseph Fourier fell down a flight of stairs on the 4th of May 1830. He had been living with a heart condition since his days in Egypt and Grenoble, but that…
- Pierre-Simon LaplacePierre-Simon Laplace stood before Napoleon Bonaparte in the early years of the nineteenth century and handed him a copy of his book on the universe.
- Élie MetchnikoffÉlie Metchnikoff inserted tiny citrus thorns into the larvae of starfish and then waited. What he saw in 1882 would alter the course of medicine.
- Louis de BroglieLouis de Broglie was born on the 15th of August 1892 in Dieppe, France, into a noble family that had sent soldiers and statesmen to French courts for…