Biot, Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste Biot, physicist, astronomer and mathematician, was born April 21, 1774 in Paris. A protege of the astronomer and mathematician Laplace, Biot became titulary of the chair of mathematical physics at the College de France in 1800, at age 26. In 1804, the year following his report on the fall of the meteorite at L'Aigle, which made him famous all over Europe, he undertook a perilous ascension in a hydrogen balloon with the chemist Gay-Lussac (1778-1750) in order to study the properties of the atmosphere, and to determine the inclination of the Earth's magnetic field. In 1812, Biot tu...