THE

YEAR-BOOK OF FACTS

IN

Science and Art:

EXHIBITING

THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES & IMPROVEMENTS
OF THE PAST YEAR;

IN MECHANICS AND THE USEFUL ARTS; NATURAL PHILOSOPHY;
ELECTRICITY; CHEMISTRY; ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY; GEOOLGY

AND GEOGRAPHY; METEOROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY.

BY JOHN TIMBS,

EDITOR OF "THE ARCANA OF SCIENCE AND ART."

"The wider the spread of Science, the wider will be the sphere of its usefulness.
One great duty which we owe to the public is, to encourage the application of abstract
science to the practical purposes of life-to bring, as it were, the study and the laboratory
into juxtaposition with the workshop."
MR. HOPKINS, President of the BRITISH ASSOCIATION, 1853.

A

ARAGO.

(With a Portrait, from a Photograph by CLAUDET.)

In the past year, France has lost one of her greatest lights, and Science has been shorn of one of her brightest beams: Arago is numbered with the illus-, trious dead. A glorious luminary has left our lower sphere; but his immortal writings will shed a lustre upon the paths of Science as long as the world is governed by the same laws.

1

Dominique-François-Jean Arago was born in the village of Estagel, near Perpignan, in the Pyrenees, on the 26th of February, 1786; and he died at the Observatory, in Paris, on Sunday, the 2nd of October-consequently he was in the 68th year of his age. His father, who was cashier at the mint of Perpignan, encouraged the early taste of his son for science; but though he is said not to have been able to read at the age of fourteen, he made such rapid progress at the. College of Montpellier that he was admitted at the age of eighteen a pupil of the Polytechnic School at Paris. In this able Seminary, where the most distinguished of the French philosophers received their education, young Arago took the lead of his fellow-scholars; and obtained such eminence in mathematics and astronomy, that he was appointed, in 1806, Secretary to the Board of Longitude. In this office he remained two years, when he was appointed, along with Biot and two Spanish commissioners, MM. Chaix and Rodriguez, to complete the measurement of the arc of the meridian, from Dunkirk to Barcelona, which had been begun by Mechain and Delambre, as the basis of the Metrical Decimal System first adopted by the Convention. This scientific labour was considerably advanced, when Biot returned to Paris, leaving Arago in charge of the important work. The war commencing at this time between France and Spain put an end to this mission of science; and the young mathematician had to make his escape in disguise from an enraged and ignorant peasantry. He escaped only to become a prisoner; and when eventually liberated by the Spaniards, he fell into the hands of an Algerine corsair, and was released from captivity by the Dey of Algiers only in 1809.

At the age of twenty-three, Arago returned to Paris; and, as a reward for his zeal, upon the death of the celebrated astronomer Lalande, Arago, though only twenty-three years of age, was, in opposition to the standing rules of the Academy of Sciences, appointed to the vacant place in the section of astronomy. Although Arago, when a pupil at the Polytechnic School, had voted against the assumption of the consulate for life, yet Bonaparte, who knew how to value an honourable man, never resented this act of hostility; but, remembering the courage of the young philosopher, he appointed him one of the Professors of the Polytechnic School, and subsequently Director of the Imperial Observatory, in which he resided till his death.

During this period, M. Arago contributed sixty distinct memoirs on various branches of science; the most important of which appeared in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, the Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Scéances de l'Academie des Sciences, and the Annales de Physique et de Chimie.

Arago's first contribution to science was made in conjunction with the illustrious M. Biot. The paper was entitled, "On the Affinities of bodies for Light, and particularly on the Refractive Powers of the different Gases," and was read at the Institute on March 24, 1806, when Arago was only twenty years of age.

In the year 1808, the Institute of France proposed The Double Refraction of Light, as the subject of a prize to be awarded in 1810. The prize was adjudged to E. L. Malus (a member of the Egyptian Institute, and Colonel of the Imperial Corps of Engineers), who was thus led to the great discovery of the Polarization of Light by Reflection from the surfaces of transparent bodies, a subject which was diligently studied in France by Arago, Biot, and Fresnel; and in England by Dr. Young and Sir David Brewster. M. Arago, the friend of Malus, was the first to publish the result of his researches. On August 11, 1811, he communicated to the Institute a memoir, "On a particular modification which the Luminous Rays experience in their passage through certain Transparent Bodies;" and this memoir was followed by a series of discoveries made on both sides of the Channel, which Sir John Herschel has characterized as "presenting a picture of emulous and successful research, than which nothing prouder has adorned the annals of physical science since the development of the true system of the universe."