page_title: Jean-Antoine Nollet
section_title: Scientific work
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Antoine Nollet / Scientific work
caption_attribution_description: Electrical experiments Rare Books
context_page_description: Jean-Antoine Nollet was a French clergyman and physicist who did a number of experiments with electricity and discovered osmosis. As a priest, he was also known as Abbé Nollet.
context_section_description: One of many experimental demonstrations of static electricity which he carried out was the "Electric boy", in which a young man was suspended from the ceiling using insulating silk cords, and electrified, causing his body to accumulate charge.  Objects were attracted to him, and close proximity of another person could lead to sparks.
  In 1746 Nollet gathered about two hundred monks into a circle about a mile (1.6 km) in circumference, with pieces of iron wire connecting them. He then discharged a battery of Leyden jars through the human chain and observed that each man reacted at substantially the same time to the electric shock, showing that the speed of electricity's propagation was very high. In 1748 he discovered the phenomenon of osmosis in natural membranes. In the same year, he also invented an electroscope.
  In 1750 Nollet was the first to report a phenomenon that is known today as electrostatic spraying. He noted that water flowing from a vessel would aerosolize if the vessel was electrified and placed near electrical ground.  He also noted that similarly “a person, electrified by connection to a high-voltage generator, would not bleed normally if he were to cut himself; blood would spray from the wound.”
caption: Effects of electricity on living organisms and electrospray, Recherches sur les causes particulières des phénomènes électriques,, 1749 (Wellcome L0007028)
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