Revolutionary science
Subtitle: transformation and turmoil in the age of the guillotine
By: Steve Jones
Edition: First Pegasus Books hardcover edition.
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 353
ISBN-13: 9781681773094
Subjects: French Revolution; Science; History; Biography; Scientists
Description: "Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. Its scholars laid the foundations of today's physics, chemistry and biology. They were true revolutionaries: agents of an upheaval both of understanding and of politics. The city was saturated in scientists; many had an astonishing breadth of talents. The Minister of Finance just before the upheaval did research on crystals and the spread of animal disease. After it, Paris's first mayor was an astronomer, the general who fought off invaders was a mathematician while Marat, a major figure in the Terror, saw himself as a leading physicist. Paris in the century around 1789 saw the first lightning conductor, the first flight, the first estimate of the speed of light and the invention of the tin can and the stethoscope. The theory of evolution came into being."--
Notes: Includes index.