MARAT (Jean-Paul). Autograph letter signed "Le... Lot 47
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MARAT (Jean-Paul). Autograph letter signed "Le Dr Marat" [to Alexis Rochon]. Paris, January 25, 1788. One p. 1/2 in-4; small foxing, one crack restored.
A physician and physicist by trade, the future publicist and conventioneer Jean-Paul Marat criticized certain aspects of Isaac Newton's theories on optics, particularly with regard to the differential refrangibility of light. However, he also sought recognition for his own scientific work from the Académie des Sciences, which held it to Newtonian orthodoxy. 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 the latter, 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 CAUSE, THE DOCTRINE OF DIFFERENT REFRANGIBILITY; and I have no doubt that you would not have overthrown it, had you turned your views to the facts on which it is based. Chance has spared me this work, and although we still differ in principles, the love of truth unites us, AND I AM PLEASED THAT YOU WOULD WISH TO RECEIVE MY WORK AS A MARK OF ESTIMATE. Examine it, Sir, with the impartiality and discernment you have shown so often; 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 scrutinizer of nature..."
THEN SUB-DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ABBE ROCHON (1741-1817) had acquired a certain notoriety 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 to the Académie des Sciences in 1780, and enabled him to obtain the post of optician astronomer to the Navy in 1787. During the French Revolution (1791), he served as General Commissioner of Coins, 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).
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