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MARAT (Jean-Paul). Autograph letter signed "Le Dr Marat" [to…
See original version (French)
17
-
MARAT (Jean-Paul). Autograph letter signed "Le Dr Marat" [to…
See original version (French)
Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
Voluntary lot
Description
MARAT (Jean-Paul). Autograph letter signed "Le Dr Marat" [to Alexis Rochon]. Paris, 25 January 1788. One p. 1/2 in-4; small foxing, one crack restored.
A doctor and physicist by trade, the future publicist and conventioneer Jean-Paul Marat criticised certain aspects of Isaac Newton's theories on optics, particularly with regard to the differential refrangibility of light. However, he sought recognition for his own scientific work from the Académie des Sciences, which held Newtonian orthodoxy in high regard. So, at the end of 1787, he published a translation of the Opticks treatise that the great English scientist had published in 1704: in it, he affirmed his admiration for Newton, but set out his own ideas on various points in a critical commentary accompanying his translation.
"I DO NOT IGNORE, MONSIEUR, THAT YOU ARE THE FIRST WHO HAS ATTACKED, WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSE, THE DOCTRINE OF DIFFERENT REFRANGIBILITY; and I have no doubt that you would not have overthrown it, if you had turned your views towards the facts on which it is based. Chance has provided me with this work, and although we still differ in our principles, the love of truth unites us, and I am flattered that you are willing to accept my work as a mark of esteem. Examine it, Sir, with the impartiality and discernment you have shown so many times; note the little-known facts it contains, weigh the new proofs it develops; and if it deserves your approval, deign to contribute to the triumph of truth; with the generous zeal of a true scrutiniser of nature...".
ABBE ROCHON (1741-1817), THEN DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, had acquired a certain reputation as a physicist, astronomer and optician. Born Alexis-Marie de Rochon de Fournoux, in 1765 he was appointed keeper of the instruments and library of the Académie de Marine in Brest, carried out scientific missions in Morocco, the Cape of Good Hope, the South Seas and Madagascar, and became an associate member of the Académie de Marine (1774), keeper of the King's private physics and optics cabinet at La Muette (1775). He invented a prismatic micrometer using the birefringence of rock crystal (1777), which opened the doors of the Académie des Sciences to him in 1780, and enabled him to obtain the post of optician astronomer to the Navy in 1787. During the Revolution (1791), he was commissioner-general of coins for a time, before returning to his native Brittany under the Terror. Having regained his position at the Institut, he was appointed director of the Paris Observatory (1795-1805).
See original version (French)
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