Background

Étienne-Jules Marey was born on March 5, 1830, in Beaune, Bourgogne, France. He was the only child of a wine manager of the Bouvard winery. His interest was engineering; however, his father persuaded him to enter medical school in Paris in 1849.

Education

Étienne-Jules Marey studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris and then was an intern at the Hôpital Cochin. His doctoral dissertation was made in 1857 on the circulation of the blood utilized recording instruments that were modified versions of those developed by German physiologists, particularly Karl Ludwig.

Career

By installing the instruments he used for his doctoral dissertation in his lodgings on the Rue Cuvier, Marey established the first private laboratory in Paris for the study of experimental physiology. In 1868 he succeeded Pierre Flourens in the chair of "natural history of organized bodies" at the Collège de France.

During the first decade of his research career (1857-1867) Marey applied the technique of graphical recording to the study of the mechanics and hydraulics of the circulatory system, the heartbeat, respiration, and muscle contraction in general. He analyzed the circulatory and muscular systems in terms of the physical variables, elasticity, resistance, and tonicity. With the graphical trace, he established the relationship of heart rate and blood pressure, thus supplementing previous studies of the value of blood pressure in a vessel with traces of its waveform.

After having identified the actions of parts of the organ or system under investigation by means of particular motions of the recording stylus, Marey constructed an artificial model of the organ or system. By manipulating these constructions to obtain wave forms identical to those produced in the living subject, he demonstrated the accuracy of his analyses of the characteristics of his graphical traces.

Using traces of the motions of bird and insect wings, Marey showed that changes in the form of the wing modify its air-resistance properties; rather than contracting the wing flexor and extensor muscles, this surface change accounts for much of the upward and forward motion of the flying animal. By this means, Marey determined the mechanical requirements for the physiological apparatus of flight. As with his deductions drawn from his circulatory studies, here too he sought to verify his deductions by constructing models that would display the same properties as those of the living specimen. He examined the structure of the muscle and skeletal systems in the light of these mechanical requirements to learn how the size and insertion of muscles, bone length, and joint angles combined to fulfill those requirements.

Marey also studied the length and frequency of steps taken by human beings and quadrupeds under various environmental conditions. Again, he sought the clinical application of his results - in this case, to elucidate different locomotor pathologies. This work depended upon the invention of "Marey’s tambour," a device for the transmission and recording of subtle motions without seriously limiting the subject’s freedom of movement. The tambour is an air-filled metal capsule covered by a rubber membrane. When compression distorts the membrane, the air is forced through an opening from the capsule into a fine, flexible tube; at the opposite end of the tube a similar capsule receives these variations in air pressure and its membrane activates the movable lever on the graphical recorder. Marey’s tambour was still being used in 1955.

When Marey saw that the pattern of leg motions and hoofbeats of a trotting horse could be depicted clearly by photographs taken in rapid succession, he turned to the perfection of a photographic device that could be used to improve his studies of animal locomotion. Beginning in 1881, his modifications of a camera that had been used by Janssen to record the transit of Venus in 1874 made an important contribution to the development of cinematographic techniques. Also in 1881, he persuaded the municipal council of Paris to annex to his professorial chair land at the Parc-des-Princes, where he constructed a physiological station for the photographic study of animal motion outdoors under the most natural conditions possible. For almost the whole of the following two decades, he devoted himself to the application of cinematography to physiology, extending its use to such subjects as photographing water currents produced by the motions of fish and microscopic organisms.

In 1895 Marey became the president of the Académie des Sciences, to which he had been elected in 1878.

Achievements

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  Étienne-Jules Marey was the inventor of the "chronophotograph" (1888) from which modern cinematography was developed. His works, widely reported in the international press, were a strong inspiration for Thomas Edison and Louis Lumière, among others. Some, in fact, see Marey, rather than the Lumière brothers, as the true father of cine photography. Marey's greatest achievement was his use of photography to study movement. His chronophotographs (multiple exposures on single glass plates and on strips of film that passed automatically through a camera of his own design) had an important influence on both science and the arts and helped lay the foundation of motion pictures.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Animal Mechanism: A Treatise On Terrestrial and Aërial Locomotion
  • La Chronophotographie 1899
  • Movement 1895
  • La Parole Dapres Le Trace Du Phonographe 1897
  • Physiologie Experimentale 1877
  • La Circulation Du Sang À l'État Physiologique Et Dans Les Maladies 1881

Views

In this early work, Marey sought to apply his methods and results to pathology and to clinical diagnosis. His concern with the greatest possible accuracy in graphical records was matched by his concern for simplifying instruments so that they could be easily used by the clinical diagnostician.

During this first decade, Marey’s accomplishments depended more upon technical achievement than upon innovative choice of problems. His research topics were in fact fairly straightforward extensions of investigations begun by Bernard, Helmholtz, and Vierordt. Emil du Bois-Reymond, Fick, and Weber were also important influences. After 1868, however, he turned to what was then a more novel area for the application of recording devices - the study of human and animal locomotion.

In Marey’s view, physiology "is itself but the study of organic movements," and the graph best represents all the variations that such phenomena undergo. Marey believed, however, that these motions ultimately were to be explained by laws of physics and chemistry. Furthermore, while he accepted the application of physiological research to medical problems, he subordinated this utilitarian purpose to a more abstract goal: "analyzing the conditions which modify the functions of life and better determining the laws which regulate these functions." Toward this end, medicine served only as one further means of analysis.

Marey’s strong desire to see the graph become the language of physiological description led him to fear that confusion and repetition would increase without some standardization of the equipment and parameters used in the recording. He, therefore, proposed to the fourth International Physiological Congress in 1898 that a committee be formed to suggest uniform standards and to perfect the technology of recording devices. When his suggestion was accepted, he solicited and obtained donations from the French government, the municipality of Paris, the Royal Society of London, and other scientific academies for construction at the Parc-des-Princess of an institute where the committee members could work. This institute has since been called the Institut Marey.

Quotations: "Art and science encounter each other when they seek exactitude."

Membership

Marey was a member of the Academy of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences, of which he was made president in 1895. For many years he was president of the French Photographic Society.

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  French Academy of Sciences , France

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  National Academy of Medicine , France

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  French Photographic Society , France

Personality

Étienne-Jules Marey was regarded by friends and colleagues as perfectionistic, affable, and generous person. The usage of the chronophotographic gun, which Marey used to aim at birds, but without shooting, appeared unusual to local people who referred to Maray sometimes as the "silly from Posillipo" ("lo scemo di Posillipo").

Physical Characteristics: Marey was known to suffer from gallstones and phlebitis.

Connections

Étienne-Jules Marey was never married but it is known that he had an affair with Marie-Antoinette Elvire Vilbort, the wife of Joseph Vilbort, the director of the French journal Le Globe. She was the mother of his daughter, Francesca Gallone, who he adopted. Marey and madame Vilbort bought villa Maria in Posillipo in 1880.

Mistress:

Marie-Antoinette Elvire Vilbort

Daughter:

Francesca Gallone

colleague:

Anton Dohrn

colleague:

Georges Demenÿ

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volumes 9 & 10
  1980
• Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey
  1995
• Étienne-Jules Marey: 100 Photographic Reproductions
  2011
• Etienne-Jules Marey: La passion de la trace
  1987
• Lettres d'etienne-jules marey a georges demeny 1880-1894
  2002