December 22, 1904] 



NATURE 



177 



SOME SCIENTIFIC CENTRES. 



VI.— The Physical Laboratory at the Museum 



d'Histoire naturelle. 



THE Museums d'Histoire naturelle, in the beautiful 

 surroundings of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, 

 tfounded in 1793. form an institution of acknow- 

 ledged eminence'; whilst the lectures delivered there 

 are by the most renowned professors, and on most, 

 if not all, branches of the natural sciences. It was 

 •Cardinal Richelieu, as we know, who founded the 

 Jardin des Plantes somewhere 

 about 1626, not long before the 

 ■establishment of the French 

 Academy by the same great 

 Minister of State. 



The physical laboratory in par- 

 ticular of these museums has been 

 the seat of many discoveries and 

 ithe centre from which has radi- 

 ated some of the best thought, as 

 well as some of the best work, 

 that has animated the academy 

 and through it the scientific world 

 for three-quarters of a century. 

 It is not often the case with 

 science, nor, indeed, with other 

 branches of learning, that in a 

 single family there should be 

 found for three generations a 

 series of distinguished men of the 

 highest order of intellect who have 

 ■devoted their lives and best 

 energies to its pursuit and 

 attained to universal fame. More 

 seldom is it, then, that when the 

 lineage is thus preserved un- 

 broken, the members thereof 

 •should all be devoted to the one 

 and to the self-same calling. For 

 three generations the Becquerels 

 have occupied in succession the 

 same chair at the same institu- 

 tion, namely, the Museum 

 d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. The 

 number of papers which have 

 been read before the Academic 

 des Sciences by the Becquerels 

 extends to seven or eight hundred. 



Henri Becquerel, whose portrait 

 in his laboratory at the Museum 

 d'Histoire naturelle is here repro- 

 duced, is, we venture to think, 

 perhaps the most distinguished of 

 iiis race. His father, Alexander 

 Edmond, is known as the in- 

 ventor of the phosphoroscope and 

 the author of " La Lumifere," a 

 work of great value in its day, 

 whilst his grandfather, Antoine 

 ■C^sar, was likewise famous for a 

 long series of researches, chiefly 

 on chemical dynamics and electro- 

 capillary phenomena. His electro- 

 tnagnetic balance is of historic 

 interest in the development of the galvanometer, 

 although long since abandoned for practical purposes. 



Thus the history of the physical laboratory at the 

 Museum d'Histoire naturelle may be said to run 

 parallel with the historv of the Becquerels, and the 

 two to be so closely interwoven that to describe the 

 part played by one and the influence exerted by it in 

 the development and advancement of knowledge is 

 perhaps equivalent to writing that of the other in detail. 



NO. 1834, VOL. 71] 



It was not so with other scientific centres of this series ; 

 there there were many discontinuities, here the con- 

 tinuity is one. 



The technical process of gilding due to de la Rive 

 was based upon Becquerel's observation in 1834 of the 

 deposition of metals on the negative electrode when 

 the poles of a pile are immersed in solutions of various 

 metallic salts ; that the two solutions needed could be 

 kept apart by the use of animal membranes without 

 preventing the passage of the current, and that with 

 very feeble currents the deposition of metal is even 



and uniform on the surface of the electrode. Although 

 rivalled by many others in the application of these 

 principles,' many were the facts and many the methods 

 which he announced with rapid succession in laying 

 the foundations of the art of electro-plating. 



It was to the study of electrocapillary phenomena, 

 which he was the first to observe in 1S67, that his later 

 years were devoted. The discovery was a curious one, 

 "the result, if we mistake not, of the deposition of 



