356 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



AuGUSTE Arthur de la Eive was born at Geneva, in Switzer- 

 land, on October 9, 1801. He was the son of Charles Gaspare! de la 

 Rive, Professor of Chemistry and Physics in the Academy of Geneva, 

 by whom he was educated and whose tastes he inherited. His first 

 scientific publication was on the infiuence of the earth's magnetism 

 upon a movable frame traversed by a voltaic current, published in 



1822, and followed by a memoir upon Caustics, which appeared in 



1823. From that time forward, for a period of fifty years, he made 

 numerous contributions to science, which were published in the " Me- 

 moires de la Societe de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Geneve " 

 or in the " Bibliotheque Uuiverselle.'* From 1836 to 1845 he edited the 

 literary and scientific parts of the " Bibliotheque Uuiverselle," which 

 were then united. He compiled alone, as supplementary to it, the " Ar- 

 chives de I'Electricite," in five volumes (1841-45) ; and, with Marignac 

 and others, the " Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles," in 

 thirty-six volumes (1846-57); and the " Nouvelle Periode " of the same 

 Recueil, in nine volumes (1858-1860). 



De la Rive began his scientific labors soon after the new era was 

 opened in the history of electricity and magnetism by the discovery of 

 electro-magnetism, and by Ampere's electro-dynamical theory. His 

 father had a share in this discovery, and his house was visited by 

 others eminent in the same line of research. This may account for 

 the preference which the son early manifested for the study of elec- 

 tricity, and which he continued to cultivate in its manifold relations 

 to the end of his scientific career. Indeed, there are very few among 

 his many printed papers which are upon other subjects. In 1840 he 

 published an account of an electro-chemical process for gildiug silver 

 and brass, for which he received a prize of 3000 francs from the 

 Academy of Sciences in Paris. This and other j^apers were deemed 

 of sufficient value to be republished in the " Anuales de Chimie et de 

 Physique " or in the " Comptes Rendus." The principal work of De 

 la Rive was his " Traite de I'Electricite Theorique et Appliquee," in 

 three volumes, which appeared in the years 1854-58, into which he 

 incorporated his theory of the cause of the Aurora Borealis, first pub- 

 lished as a memoir in 1854, and illustrated by the experiment, now 

 familiar to physicists, of rotating the voltaic arc of light around the 

 pole of a magnet as any other ponderable conductor would rotate. 

 This work, which was simultaneously pubhshed in the French and 

 English languages, is accurate and comprehensive, and is indispensable 

 for the scientific student of electricity. 



Thus the scientific reputation of the younger De la Rive was exactly 



