22 Facts About Pierre Duhem

Pierre Duhem was the son of Pierre-Joseph Duhem, who was of Flemish origins, and Marie Alexandrine nee Fabre, whose family hailed from Languedoc.

Pierre Duhem-Joseph worked as a sales representative in the textile industry and the family lived in a modest neighborhood on the Rue des Jeuneurs, just south of Monmartre.

The young Pierre Duhem completed his secondary studies at the College Stanislas, where his interest in the physical sciences was encouraged by his teacher Jules Moutier, who was a theoretical physicist and the author of influential textbooks on thermodynamics.

Pierre Duhem was admitted as the first-ranked of his cohort at the prestigious Ecole normale superieure in 1882.

Pierre Duhem then earned his agregation in physical sciences in 1885.

Pierre Duhem prepared a doctoral thesis on the use of the thermodynamic potential in the theory of electrochemical cells.

In 1888 Pierre Duhem finally received his doctorate with a new thesis on the theory of magnetization dynamics.

Pierre Duhem found work first at the University of Lille, then briefly at the University of Rennes, and finally as a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bordeaux, where he was based for the rest of his career.

Pierre Duhem's approach was strongly influenced by the early works of Josiah Willard Gibbs, which Duhem effectively explained and promoted among French scientists.

Pierre Duhem was a supporter of energetics and was convinced that all physical phenomena, including mechanics, electromagnetism, and chemistry, could be derived from the principles of thermodynamics.

Pierre Duhem shared Ernst Mach's skepticism about the physical reality and usefulness of the concept of atoms.

Pierre Duhem therefore did not follow the statistical mechanics of James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Gibbs, who explained the laws of thermodynamics in terms of the statistical properties of mechanical systems composed of many atoms.

Pierre Duhem was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

In 1914, Pierre Duhem commented that Einstein's relativity theory "has turned physics into a real chaos where logic loses its way and common-sense runs away frightened".

Pierre Duhem stated that the theory of relativity "overthrow[s] all the doctrines in which one has spoken of space, of time, of movement, all the theories of mechanics and of physics".

Pierre Duhem is well known for his work on the history of science, which resulted in the ten volume Le systeme du monde: histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon a Copernic.

Pierre Duhem consequently came to regard them as the founders of modern science, having in his view anticipated many of the discoveries of Galileo Galilei and later thinkers.

Pierre Duhem argues that physics is subject to certain methodological limitations that do not affect other sciences.

Nonetheless, Pierre Duhem argues that it is important for the theologian or metaphysician to have detailed knowledge of physical theory in order not to make illegitimate use of it in speculations.

Pierre Duhem received an honorary doctorate from the Jagiellonian University, in Krakow, Poland, in 1900.

Pierre Duhem was promoted to titular non-resident member in 1913.

Towards the end of his life, Pierre Duhem was recommended as a candidate for the chair of History of Science at the prestigious College de France, in Paris.