The Background to the Discovery of Dulong and Petit's Law

1968/06/01 by Robert Fox · 64 citations
Arts and Humanities · Chemistry · Mathematics · #Aesthetics #Archaeology #Art #Climax #Greatness #History #History and Theory of Mathematics #History and advancements in chemistry #Literature #Period (music) #Philosophy #Philosophy and History of Science #Style (visual arts)

paper · doi:10.1017/s0007087400003150

published in The British Journal for the History of Science 4(1), 1-22 (Cambridge University Press)

openalex publication_date 1968/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

The years immediately after the final downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte could easily have been years of anti-climax in French science. In 1815, after two decades of undoubted greatness, the time, I feel, was ripe for decline. And decline might well have occurred if the traditions and the style of science as practised in France in the period of Napoleon's rule had been carried on unchanged by the disciples of the two great men who had dominated work in the physical sciences for so many years. These men, of course, were the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet and the mathematician and physicist Pierre Simon Laplace.

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