Background
Pierre Prévost was born on March 3, 1751, in Geneva, Switzerland, the son of a Calvinist minister and principal of the college of Geneva.
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Pierre Prévost was a corresponding member of the Royal Society of London from 1801.
educator philosopher physicist scientist
Pierre Prévost was born on March 3, 1751, in Geneva, Switzerland, the son of a Calvinist minister and principal of the college of Geneva.
Prevost’s father made every effort to assure the excellence of his children’s education. Consequently, Prevost studied not only the classical languages and literatures but also the sciences under H. B. de Saussure, Lesage, and Mallet. In accordance with his father’s wishes, he pursued theology for several years but then turned to law and received his doctorate in 1773.
From 1773 to 1780 Prevost worked as a teacher and tutor in Holland, in Lyons, and finally in Paris. Simultaneously, he was engaged in a translation of the works of Euripides; in 1778 he published Orestes, which gained him fame among classical scholars. As a result, he was invited to Berlin in 1780 by Frederick the Great as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres. While in Berlin, Prevost contributed several memoirs on moral philosophy and poetry and stimulated by Lagrange, published articles on scientific subjects.
Upon the death of his father in 1784, he returned to Geneva and filled the chair of literature there for a year before going to Paris to work on an edition of Greek drama. Late in 1786 he returned to Geneva and became active in politics, serving as a member of the Council of Two Hundred, as attorney general, and as a member of the national assembly created to change the constitution of Geneva.
In 1793 Prevost was named to the chair of philosophy and general physics at Geneva, and he retained this post until his retirement in 1823. He wrote extensively on political economy, psychology, public education, probability theory, electricity, and meteorology. He translated Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Malthas’s Essay on Population, the moral philosophy of Dugald Stewart, and Hugh Blair’s works on rhetoric. In addition, Prevost maintained an active correspondence with scientists, philosophers, and classical scholars throughout Europe.
Early in the French Revolution Prevost argued for the continued independence of Geneva and pleaded for moderation in the social and political reform of the city-state, which led to his detention for three weeks in 1794 by the revolutionary party. In 1798 he was named to the commission that regulated the union of Geneva with France; and in 1814, when Geneva was restored to the status of a republic, he was elected a member of the representative council.
In his last years, he turned his attention to the study of aging in human beings, writing in detail about the progressive physical infirmities that he observed in himself.
(Volume 2)
1842After returning to Geneva in 1786, Prevost became active in politics and served as a member of the Council of Two Hundred, which was the legislative authorities in four Swiss cities (Zürich, Bern, Fribourg, Basel), as well as in the independent Republic of Geneva, prior to the French Revolution.
In 1788 Prevost published De l’origine des forces magnétiques, which made him known among physicists, and thereafter he became principally interested in heat phenomena owing to the publication in 1790 of Essai sur le feu, the work of a fellow Genevan Marc Auguste Pictet. Pictet, following Deluc, believed that heat consisted of a continuous material fluid and that the radiation of heat between two objects at unequal temperatures was accomplished by the progressive expansions and contractions of this fluid, drawing an analogy between this process and the transmission of sound.
Rejecting this view in “Sur l’équilibre du feu” (1791), Prevost conceived of heat as a “discrete fluid” or medium composed of particles the intervals of which are very great in comparison to their dimensions; during the process of radiation these particles, in the form of rays, stream continuously between the two radiating bodies. When the equilibrium of heat is upset, it is gradually reestablished by the unequal exchange of particles. In later writings, Prevost clarified his ideas while retaining his conviction in the materiality of heat.
Pierre Prévost was a corresponding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1796 and of the Royal Society of London from 1801.
Prevost remained mentally active until his death.