152 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



of these he supervised the building of fortifications during 

 a nine-year stay in Martinique. On his return in 1776, he 

 found for the first time leisure for purely scientific work, 

 and in the thirteen years which followed up to the outbreak 

 of the great revolution, he carried out his fundamental 

 electric and magnetic investigations. They brought him 

 recognition, military advancement, membership of the Aca- 

 demy, and an influential position in the academic world, not 

 without difficulties having occurred now and then; thus it is 

 reported that he was condemned to arrest, when an out- 

 spoken technical report of his had made him disliked in high 

 places of the government. When the weakness of the king 

 became greater and more obvious, and the rule of the mob 

 had begun (storming of the Bastille, proclamation of the 

 Rights of Man, 1789), Coulomb resigned all his official posts 

 and retired to his small estate near Blois, where he lived 

 entirely for his science and for his family.^ Napoleon, who 

 had restored order, gave him back his former posts in 

 which he worked devotedly until his death in Paris at the 

 age of seventy years. 



Coulomb's fundamental achievement as regards electricity 

 is best appreciated, when we consider how much detailed 

 knowledge had been collected up to his time, without it be- 

 ing possible to obtain a general and comprehensive idea of 

 it. In this connection, we may recall several eminent in- 

 vestigators, more or less forerunners of Coulomb, who by 

 careful experimenting and clear thinking, had already brought 

 to light from time to time new forms of electrical phenom- 

 ena. All their work appeared like the 'effects of a magic 

 force,' as Priestley expressed it;^ as a result of Coulomb's 



^ In this respect he behaved quite differently from his contem- 

 porary Lavoisier, who adopted the slogan of the revolutionists: 'II faut 

 tout d^truir - oui, tout d^truir - parcequ'il faut tout reorder' (Everything 

 must be destroyed - yes, everything destroyed - since all must be 

 created afresh); he himself however, ended by the guillotine. 



- In his History of Electricity, 1767. 



