272 



Scientific Life and Work 



Legion of Honor. In 1855, he was appointed director of 

 the porcelain works at Sevres, a position which he held 

 for eighteen years. While there he displayed his usual 

 industry and ingenuity and many improvements in the 

 process of porcelain manufacture are due to him. He 

 still continued his experiments in physics, although they 

 were much interrupted by various duties and also by a 

 severe accident which happened to him soon after his 

 appointment at Sevres. 



From this time his scientific work appears chiefly in 

 communications to the Academy of Sciences and in con- 

 tributions to the Annales de Chimie et Physique, of which 

 he was for many years an editor. In this latter capacity 

 he was associated with such men as Damas, "Wurtz, and 

 Boussingault. 



In the latter part of his life, domestic troubles came fast 

 upon him. His sister, whom he had supported in the 

 days of his youthful poverty, died, while on a visit at his 

 house. Of his four children, two daughters and a son 

 were little better than idiots, and the former, at the 

 time of their father's death, were kept under strict guar- 

 dianship. The other son, Henri, a painter of great pro- 

 mise, and a man of cultivated literary tastes, was killed 

 in the battle of Buzenval in the year 1871. Regnault 

 himself became paralytic, and it was even rumored that 

 his mind had been affected, and that it had been found 

 necessary to put him under restraint. This report, how- 

 ever, was without foundation. He attended the meetings 

 of the Institute up to the day of his death, and although 

 he could not walk without support and was otherwise 

 helpless physically, his mind seems to have been perfectly 

 clear to the end. The last four years of his life were spent 

 at Auteuil, a place, about three miles from Paris, where 

 Boileau, Moliere and other famous Frenchmen had lived 

 and died. He seldom left the place except to attend a 



