Part 30 (1/2)

(B)

The _Mecanique Celeste_--This stupendous monument of intellectual research consists, as stated by the author, of five quarto volumes The subject-ain is subdivided into several chapters Vol I contains the first and second books of the work; Vol II contains the third, fourth, and fifth books; Vol III contains the sixth and seventh books; Vol IV contains the eighth, ninth, and tenth books; and, finally, Vol V contains the re six books In the first book the author treats of the general laws of equilibriuravitation, and the ravity of the celestial bodies In the third book he investigates the subject of the figures of the celestial bodies In the fourth book he considers the oscillations of the ocean and the at action of the celestial bodies The fifth book is devoted to the investigation of the ravity In this book the author gives a solution of the great problems of the precession of the equinoxes and the libration of the moon, and deter depends The sixth book is devoted to the theory of the planetary hth, to the theory of the satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; and the ninth, to the theory of coates various subjects relating to the syste these may be mentioned the theory of astronohts by the baroation of the effects produced on themedium; and the determination of the values of the masses of the planets and satellites In the six books for the fifth volu his readers with an historical exposition of the labours of Newton and his successors on the theory of gravitation, gives an account of various researches relative to the system of the universe, which had occupied his attention subsequently to the publication of the previous voluure and rotation of the earth In the twelfth book he investigates the attraction and repulsion of spheres, and the laws of equilibrium and motion of elastic fluids The thirteenth book is devoted to researches on the oscillations of the fluids which cover the surfaces of the planets; the fourteenth, to the subject of the ravity; the fifteenth, to the movements of the planets and comets; and the sixteenth, to the movements of the satellites The author published a supple the results of certain researches on the planetary theory, and a suppleates very fully the theory of capillary attraction

There was also published a posthumous supplement to the fifth volu his papers after his death

JOSEPH FOURIER

BIOGRAPHY READ AT A PUBLIC assEMBLY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ON THE 18TH OF NOVEMBER, 1833

Gentlemen,--In former times one academician differed from another only in the number, the nature, and the brilliancy of his discoveries Their lives, thrown in some respects into the same mould, consisted of events little worthy of reress sometimes slow, sohted parents; inadequacy of means, the privations which it introduces in its train; thirty years of a laborious professorshi+p and difficult studies,--such were the elements from which the admirable talents of the early secretaries of the Academy were enabled to execute those portraits, so piquant, so lively, and so varied, which form one of the principal ornaments of your learned collections

In the present day, biographies are less confined in their object The convulsions which France has experienced in e-clothes of routine, of superstition and of privilege, have cast into the stores, of all conditions, and of all characters Thus has the Acade arena, wherein ht have alternately seized the suprelorious sacrifice of combatants and victims!

Recall to mind, for example, the immortal National assembly You will find at its head a modest academician, a patern of all the private virtues, the unfortunate Bailly, who, in the different phases of his political life, kne to reconcile a passionate affection for his country with a moderation which his most cruel enemies themselves have been compelled to admire

When, at a later period, coalesced Europe launched against France a anize for the crisis fourteen arenious author of the _Essai sur les Machines_ and of the _Geoantic operation It was, again, Carnot, our honourable colleague, who presided over the inco which French troops, novices in the profession of arht pitched battles, were victorious in one hundred and forty combats, occupied one hundred and sixteen fortified places and two hundred and thirty forts or redoubts, enriched our arsenals with four thousand cannon and seventy thousand muskets, took a hundred thousand prisoners, and adorned the do the saes, the Berthollets rushed also to the defence of French independence, soies of industry, the very last ato, by the aid of new and rapid es, and smallest hamlets into a formidable artillery, which our eneht to suppose, ere deprived of At the voice of his country in danger, another acade and learned Meunier, readily renounced the seductive pursuits of the laboratory; he went to distinguish histein, to contribute as a hero to the long defence of Mayence, andattained the highest position in a garrison wherein shone the Aubert-Dubayets, the Beaupuys, the Haxos, the Klebers

How could I forget here the last secretary of the original Academy?

Follow hiuinary deliriuht alloriously terrible it was to the enemies of our independence, and you will always see the illustrious Condorcet occupied exclusively with the great interests of reason and hue which for two centuries laid waste the African continent by a system of corruption; demand in a tone of profound conviction that the Code be purified of the frightful stain of capital punishe for ever irreparable He is the official organ of the assembly on every occasion when it is necessary to address soldiers, citizens, political parties, or foreign nations in language worthy of France; he is not the tactician of any party, he incessantly entreats all of them to occupy their attention less with their own interests and a little more with public matters; he replies, finally, to unjust reproaches of weakness by acts which leave him the only alternative of the poison cup or the scaffold

The French Revolution thus threw the learned geometer, whose discoveries I am about to celebrate, far away from the route which destiny appeared to have traced out for him In ordinary times it would be about Dom[40]

Joseph Fourier that the secretary of the Academy would have deemed it his duty to have occupied your attention It would be the tranquil, the retired life of a Benedictine which he would have unfolded to you The life of our colleague, on the contrary, will be agitated and full of perils; it will pass into the fierce contentions of the forum and amid the hazards of war; it will be a prey to all the anxieties which accompany a difficult administration We shall find this life intie Let us hasten to add, that it will be alorthy and honourable, and that the personal qualities of the man of science will enhance the brilliancy of his discoveries

FOOTNOTE:

[40] An abbreviation of Dolish prefix Reverend--_Translator_

BIRTH OF FOURIER--HIS YOUTH

Fourier was born at Auxerre on the 21st of March, 1768 His father, like that of the illustrious geometer Lambert, was a tailor This circue place in the _eloge_ of our learned colleague; thanks to the progress of enlightened ideas, I may mention the circumstance as a fact of no importance: nobody, in effect, thinks in the present day, nobody even pretends to think, that genius is the privilege of rank or fortune

Fourier becaht years A lady who had remarked the amiability of his manners and his precocious natural abilities, recoh the influence of this prelate, Fourier was admitted into the military school which was conducted at that time by the Benedictines of the Convent of St Mark There he prosecuted his literary studies with surprising rapidity and success Many sernitaries of the Church were ee It would be impossible in the present day to trace those first co the plagiarism, he had the discretion never to name those who profited by it

At thirteen years Fourier had the petulance, the noisy vivacity of ed all at once, and as if by enchantment, as soon as he was initiated in the first principles of mathematics, that is to say, as soon as he became sensible of his real vocation The hours prescribed for study no longer sufficed to gratify his insatiable curiosity Ends of candles carefully collected in the kitchen, the corridors and the refectory of the college, and placed on a hearth concealed by a screen, served during the night to illuminate the solitary studies by which Fourier prepared himself for those labours which were destined, a few years afterwards, to adorn his name and his country

In a military school directed by monks, the minds of the pupils necessarily waver only between two careers in life--the church and the sword Like Descartes, Fourier wished to be a soldier; like that philosopher, he would doubtless have found the life of a garrison very wearisome But he was not pero the exaly supported by our illustrious colleague Legendre, was rejected with a severity of expression of which you e yourselves: ”Fourier,”

replied thenoble, could not enter the artillery, although he were a second Newton”

Gentleulations, even when they arerespectable which I have a pleasure in recognizing; in the present instance nothing could soften the odious character of the minister's words It is not true in reality that no one could formerly enter into the artillery who did not possess a title of nobility; a certain fortune frequently supplied the want of parch undefinable, which, by the way, our ancestors the Franks had not yet invented, that anting to young Fourier, but rather an income of a few hundred livres, which the men ere then placed at the head of the country would have refused to acknowledge the genius of Newton as a just equivalent for! Treasure up these facts, Gentlemen; they form an admirable illustration of the i the last forty years