Abstract
PAUL BERT, who has died at his post as Governor of Tonquin, was born at Auxerre in 1833, graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1863, and Doctor of Science in 1866. Obtaining a professorship in the Faculty of Science at Bordeaux, M. Bert devoted himself especially to physiology, and in 1869 he obtained the Chair of General Physiology in the Faculty of Science at Paris. He continued here his experiments on the influence of changes of barometric pressure on life, and presented a series of papers on the subject to the Academy of Sciences, which awarded him, in 1875, its great biennial prize of 20,000 francs. He entered political life in 1870, and has all along been known as an advanced Radical. He, however, never lost his interest in science; he did much to promote education in France, and took an active part in the legislative movement which obtained for M. Pasteur an annual pension of 12,000 francs as a national recompense. M. Bert was elected President of the Biological Society in 1878, in succession to Claude Bernard, whose most brilliant pupil he was, and more recently was admitted to the Academy of Sciences. In Gambetta's Cabinet of 1881 he was Minister of Public Instruction, and a few months ago accepted the post of Governor of Tonquin, where one of his most notable acts was the founding of a Tonquinese Academy. M. Bert's papers on “Barometric Pressure” were published as a separate volume in 1877, and his lectures at the Museum of Natural History were in 1869 published under the title of “Lecons sur la Physiologie Comparée de la Respiration.” He also issued, in 1869-70, “Notes d'Anatomie et de Physiologie Comparées.” For many years he had charge of the scientific department of the République Française.
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Paul Bert . Nature 35, 54 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/035054d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/035054d0