Jean-Baptiste Biot was educated at Lyceum Louis-le-Grand and Ecole Polytechnique in 1794.
14 Facts About Jean-Baptiste Biot
2.
Jean-Baptiste Biot served in the artillery before he was appointed professor of mathematics at Beauvais in 1797.
3.
Jean-Baptiste Biot later went on to become a professor of physics at the College de France around 1800, and three years later was elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
4.
In July 1804, Jean-Baptiste Biot joined Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac for the first scientific hot-air balloon ride to measure how the Earth's magnetic field varies with elevation.
5.
Jean-Baptiste Biot was a member of the Legion of Honour; he was elected chevalier in 1814 and commander in 1849.
6.
In 1850 Jean-Baptiste Biot published in the Journal des savants a 7-page memoir from his recollections of the period of the late 1790s and early 1800s concerning his encounters with Laplace.
7.
Jean-Baptiste Biot had a single son, Edouard Constant Biot, an engineer and Sinologist, born in 1803.
8.
Jean-Baptiste Biot's translation remains to this day the only translation into a Western language of this book.
9.
In 1803 Jean-Baptiste Biot was sent by the Academie francaise to report back on 3000 meteorites that fell on L'Aigle, in Normandy, France.
10.
Jean-Baptiste Biot found that the meteorites, called "stones" at the time, were from outer space.
11.
Only after Jean-Baptiste Biot was able to analyse the rocks at l'Aigle was it commonly accepted that the fireballs seen in the sky were meteors falling through the atmosphere.
12.
In 1812, Jean-Baptiste Biot turned his attention to the study of optics, particularly the polarization of light.
13.
Jean-Baptiste Biot began his work on polarization to show that the results he was obtaining could appear only if light were made of corpuscles.
14.
The modern application of the substance began in 1768, and in 1832, Jean Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Biot discovered the physical properties of cream of tartar.