Pictet, Marc Auguste

Marc Auguste Pictet (1752-1825) - Swiss experimental physicist and naturalist.

Born in the family of a colonel in the Dutch service. At the age of 14 he entered the Geneva Academy, where he studied philosophy and law, was a student and subsequently a friend of Saussure. In 1774 he was sworn into law, but since he was more interested in science, from 1776, after returning from an educational trip to England, he worked at the academy he graduated from, where he taught physics and philosophy, having received the title of professor in 1786, and He was also an assistant to the astronomer Jacques-Andre Mellier, who founded the city’s first observatory on the Saint-Antoine Tower of Geneva, being its actual leader since 1790.

In 1782 he was elected a member of the so-called “Council of Two Hundred”, but a year later he retired, not wanting to support the “reactionary”, in his opinion, government. In 1793, after the victory in Geneva, the revolution, together with his brother, was elected to the newly formed National Assembly, but after a few months he was forced to resign due to allegations of "Jacobite abuse." He was known as a supporter of the accession of Geneva to France, but after this happened, in 1802 he vainly advocated peace and the restoration of trade relations with England. In 1804, however, Pictet became an officer of the Legion of Honor, and in 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte appointed him one of the fifteen chief inspectors of public education - the position he held until 1813 - and in the same 1808 he elevated him in the Knights of the empire. However, when in 1810 Pictet refused to become the rector of the Strasbourg Academy, he found himself in disgrace under the Napoleon regime. In 1815 he became one of the founders of the Swiss Society for Natural Sciences in Geneva.

Pictet was actively engaged in research in the fields of physics and mathematics and was the founder of the Bibliothèque universelle; since 1796 he published the scientific journal Bibliothèque britannique (Library of the British), since 1787 - the Geneva Journal; He participated in the editing of both editions. In 1786 he joined the Society of Arts of Geneva. Since 1776 he was interested in mountaineering and meteorology, together with Saussure, he made several expeditions to Mont Blanc and carried out meteorological observations there. He was known for his ten-year-long (1786-1796) attempts to establish porcelain production in Switzerland using English technology (he visited England several times between 1775 and 1801) in Switzerland. In 1817 he founded a meteorological station on the St. Bernard Pass.

The main works of the scientist were devoted to experimental studies in the field of heat and hygrometry . So, in 1790, he set up the so-called “experience with mirrors” (or “cold reflection”), which proved the falsity of ideas about the so-called “rays” and “cold matter” and showed the existence of reflection of thermal radiation. This experiment was very important for its time, as it allowed to explain the nature of the phenomenon of radiant heat and became the basis for the formulation by the physicist Pierre Prevost of his theory of mobile thermal equilibrium. Pictet was also involved in measuring the rate of propagation of heat, but did not succeed. He also left scientific work in geology, geodesy, astronomy, meteorology.

From 1791 he was a member of the London, from 1796 - the Edinburgh Royal Societies, in 1803 he became a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. In honor of Pictet named a crater on the moon.