Abstract
AUGUST 26 is the bicentenary of the birth of Jean-Baptiste-Louis Romé de l'Isle, an assiduous student of natural history and a writer on crystallography. He was born at Gray in Haute-Saone. After being educated in Paris, he sailed to the East Indies as secretary of a company of artillery, and in 1761 became a prisoner of the English at Pondicherry, being held captive for three years. Having acquired a taste for science, on his return home he became a student of the chemist Balthasar-George Sage (1740–1824) and applied himself to mineralogy, forming a mineralogical cabinet, and in 1772 publishing his “Essai de Cristallographie”. This work he after wards enlarged and published in 1783 under the title “Cristallographie, ou Description des formes propres k tous les corps du regne mineral dans l'etat de combinaison saline pierreuse ou metallique”. It contained tables of all the crystals then known. Another subject to which he devoted much time was metrology, stimulated no doubt by the chaotic state of the weights and measures in France at the time. He collected a great mass of material relating to the subject, some of which he embodied in his “Metro -logie, ou Table pour servir a l'intelligence des poids et mesures des anciens…” which appeared in 1789, the year the Revolution broke out. Through his close application to study he suffered somewhat from failing eyesight, and this being brought to the notice of Louis XVI, he was granted a small pension, although he had held no official position. His death took place in Paris on March 7, 1790.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Romé de l'Isle (1736–90). Nature 138, 319 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138319a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138319a0