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SUMMARY:Cabinet physics in 18th-century France: the case of the Iceland sp
 ar\, 1710–1788 - Michael Bycroft (Department of History and Philosophy o
 f Science)
DTSTART:20130121T130000Z
DTEND:20130121T141500Z
UID:TALK42481@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:29667
DESCRIPTION:We know a lot about natural history\, and about experimental p
 hysics\, as they were practiced in eighteenth-century France. We know much
  less about the role of natural history in the emergence and quantificatio
 n of experimental physics in this period. This talk focuses on studies of 
 double refraction carried out by successive directors of the Jardin du Roi
  in Paris. Charles Dufay is most well-known for his papers on electricity\
 , but his experimental research on both electricity and double refraction 
 owed much to his involvement with fashionable mineral collectors in 1730s 
 Paris. At the other end of the century\, Georges Buffon used double refrac
 tion to classify minerals in his Histoire Naturelle des Minéraux (1783-88
 ). Finally\, Buffon's research fed back into la physique expérimentale th
 rough his assistant\, the astronomer and instrument-maker Alexis-Marie de 
 Rochon.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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