François Arago

Dominique François Jean Arago ( ca, Domènec Francesc Joan Aragó), known simply as François Arago (; Catalan: ''Francesc Aragó'', ; 26 February 17862 October 1853), was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, freemason, supporter of the Carbonari revolutionaries and politician.

Early life and work

Arago was born at Estagel, a small village of 3,000 near Perpignan, in the ' of Pyrénées-Orientales, France, where his father held the position of Treasurer of the Mint.
His parents were François Bonaventure Arago (1754–1814) and Marie Arago (1755–1845).

Arago was the eldest of four brothers. Jean (1788–1836) emigrated to North America and became a general in the Mexican army. Jacques Étienne Victor (1799–1855) took part in Louis de Freycinet's exploring voyage in the ''Uranie'' from 1817 to 1821, and on his return to France devoted himself to his journalism and the drama. The fourth brother, Étienne Vincent (1802–1892), is said to have collaborated with Honoré de Balzac in ''The Heiress of Birague'', and from 1822 to 1847 wrote a great number of light dramatic pieces, mostly in collaboration.

Showing decided military tastes, François Arago was sent to the municipal college of Perpignan, where he began to study mathematics in preparation for the entrance examination of the École Polytechnique. Within two years and a half he had mastered all the subjects prescribed for examination, and a great deal more, and, on going up for examination at Toulouse, he astounded his examiner by his knowledge of J.-L. Lagrange 's work.

Towards the close of 1803, Arago entered the École Polytechnique, Paris, but apparently found the professors there incapable of imparting knowledge or maintaining discipline. The artillery service was his ambition, and in 1804, through the advice and recommendation of Siméon Poisson, he received the appointment of secretary to the Paris Observatory.
He now became acquainted with Pierre-Simon Laplace, and through his influence was commissioned, with Jean-Baptiste Biot, to complete the meridian arc measurements which had been begun by J. B. J. Delambre, and interrupted since the death of P. F. A. Méchain in 1804 (the meridian arc of Delambre and Méchain).
Arago and Biot left Paris in 1806 and began operations along the mountains of Spain.
Biot returned to Paris after they had determined the latitude of Formentera, the southernmost point to which they were to carry the survey.
Arago continued the work until 1809, his purpose being to measure a meridian arc in order to determine the exact length of a metre.

After Biot's departure, the political ferment caused by the entrance of the French into Spain extended to the Balearic Islands, and the population suspected Arago's movements and his lighting of fires on the top of Mount Galatzó (Catalan: Mola de l'Esclop) as the activities of a spy for the invading army. Their reaction was such that he was obliged to give himself up for imprisonment in the fortress of Bellver in June 1808. On 28 July he escaped from the island in a fishing-boat, and after an adventurous voyage he reached Algiers on 3 August. From there he obtained a passage in a vessel bound for Marseille, but on 16 August, just as the vessel was nearing Marseille, it fell into the hands of a Spanish corsair. With the rest the crew, Arago was taken to Roses, and imprisoned first in a windmill, and afterwards in a fortress, until the town fell into the hands of the French, when the prisoners were transferred to Palamos.

After three months' imprisonment, Arago and the others were released on the demand of the dey of Algiers, and again set sail for Marseille on 28 November, but then within sight of their port they were driven back by a northerly wind to Bougie on the coast of Africa. Transport to Algiers by sea from this place would have occasioned a weary delay of three months; Arago, therefore, set out over land, guided by a Muslim priest, and reached it on Christmas Day. After six months in Algiers he once again, on 21 June 1809, set sail for Marseille, where he had to undergo a monotonous and inhospitable quarantine in the lazaretto, before his difficulties were over. The first letter he received, while in the lazaretto, was from Alexander von Humboldt; and this was the origin of a connection which, in Arago's words, "lasted over forty years without a single cloud ever having troubled it."

Scientific studies

Arago had succeeded in preserving the records of his survey; and his first act on his return home was to deposit them in the Bureau des Longitudes at Paris. As a reward for his adventurous conduct in the cause of science, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences, at the remarkably early age of twenty-three, and before the close of 1809 he was chosen by the council of the École Polytechnique to succeed Gaspard Monge in the chair of analytical geometry. At the same time he was named by the emperor one of the astronomers of the Paris Observatory, which was accordingly his residence till his death. It was in this capacity that he delivered his remarkably successful series of popular lectures in astronomy, which were continued from 1812 to 1845.

In 1818 or 1819 he proceeded along with Biot to execute geodetic operations on the coasts of France, England and Scotland. They measured the length of the seconds pendulum at Leith, Scotland, and in the Shetland Islands, the results of the observations being published in 1821, along with those made in Spain. Arago was elected a member of the Bureau des Longitudes immediately afterwards, and contributed to each of its Annuals, for about twenty-two years, important scientific notices on astronomy and meteorology and occasionally on civil engineering, as well as interesting memoirs of members of the Academy.

Arago's earliest physical researches were on the pressure of steam at different temperatures, and the velocity of sound, 1818 to 1822. His magnetic observations mostly took place from 1823 to 1826. He discovered rotatory magnetism, what has been called Arago's rotations, and the fact that most bodies could be magnetized; these discoveries were completed and explained by Michael Faraday.

Arago warmly supported Augustin-Jean Fresnel's optical theories, helping to confirm Fresnel's wave theory of light by observing what is now known as the spot of Arago. The two philosophers conducted together those experiments on the polarization of light which led to the inference that the vibrations of the luminiferous ether were transverse to the direction of motion, and that polarization consisted of a resolution of rectilinear propagation into components at right angles to each other. The subsequent invention of the polariscope

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