Jean-Baptiste Biot

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Jean-Baptiste Biot
Jean-Baptiste Biot
Jean-Baptiste Biot
Born April 21, 1774
Paris
Died February 3, 1862
Paris
Nationality French
Fields physicist, astronomer and mathematician
Doctoral students William Ritchie
Known for Biot-Savart law
Influences Pasteur

Jean-Baptiste Biot (April 21, 1774, Paris – February 3, 1862, Paris) was a French physicist, astronomer and mathematician. In the early 1800s, he studied the polarisation of light passing through chemical solutions, as well as the relationship between electrical current and magnetism. The Biot-Savart law, which describes the magnetic field generated by a steady current, is named after him and Félix Savart.

Biot and Gay-Lussac ascend in a hot air balloon, 1804. Illustration from the late 19th Century.
Biot and Gay-Lussac ascend in a hot air balloon, 1804. Illustration from the late 19th Century.

Biot was the first to discover the unique optical properties of mica, and therefore the mica-based mineral biotite was named after him.

In 1804 Biot and Joseph Gay-Lussac made a hot-air balloon ascent to a height of five kilometres in an early investigation of the Earth's atmosphere.

There is a small crater named for Biot on the Moon.

Biot was a graduate of the very famous French engineering school Ecole Polytechnique (X).

Late in Biot's life, Pasteur demonstrated to him the opposite optical rotations (equal angle, but opposite direction) of polarized light passing through aqueous solutions of mirror-image crystals.

The Biot who helped make and fly the Massia-Biot glider is a different person. See list of early flying machines.

[edit] Books by J.B. Biot

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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Preceded by
Charles Lacretelle Jeune		 Seat 12
Académie française
1856–1862		 Succeeded by
Louis de Carné