Pierre Perrault (scientist)
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Pierre Perrault (c. 1608, in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
– 1680, in Paris) was a Receiver General of Finances for Paris and later a scientist who developed the concept of the hydrological cycle. He and
Edme Mariotte Edme Mariotte (; ; c. 162012 May 1684) was a French physicist and priest ( abbé). He is particularly well known for formulating Boyle's law independently of Robert Boyle. Mariotte is also credited with designing the first Newton's cradle. Biogr ...
were primarily responsible for making
hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is call ...
an experimental science.


Life

Perrault grew up in a bourgeois family, had at least seven siblings, and probably lived all his life in Paris. Little is known about his life, despite the fame of some of his younger brothers. These include Claude, an architect of part of the Louvre Palace; Nicholas, a doctor of theology known for his denunciation of the
Jesuits , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders = ...
; and Charles, author of ''
Tales of Mother Goose Tales may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Tales'' (album), a 1995 album by Marcus Miller * ''Tales'' (film), a 2014 Iranian film * ''Tales'' (TV series), an American television series * ''Tales'' (video game), a 2016 point-and-click adventure ...
''. Perrault was trained as a lawyer, and in 1654 purchased the position of
Receiver General A receiver general (or receiver-general) is an officer responsible for accepting payments on behalf of a government, and for making payments to a government on behalf of other parties. See also * Treasurer * Receiver General for Canada * Recei ...
of Finances for Paris. This post involved collecting taxes for
Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...
, and he received a percentage of the taxes he collected. This position ruined him when Louis XIV chose to calm rebellious taxpayers by granting a remission of all taxes that were still owed after 10 years. Pierre had used some of his tax receipts for 1664 to pay creditors, and when he could not deliver the money to the royal treasury, he was forced into bankruptcy. After the bankruptcy Perrault became an amateur scientist and focused his attention on the origin of springs. The result of his labor was his book ''de l'Origine des fontaines'' (''On the Origin of Fountains''), published anonymously in 1674 and dedicated to his friend Christiaan Huygens.


''On the Origin of Springs''

In the millennia before Perrault published his book, most
natural philosophers Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science. From the ancient wor ...
asserted that there was not enough
precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...
to account for the flow in rivers and springs.
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...
claimed that most of the water came from caverns in which air was transformed into water. Many others argued that
seawater Seawater, or salt water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has appr ...
entered caverns, was heated until it rose as vapor, then condensed and fed springs, which in turn fed rivers. Although some philosophers such as Anaxagoras had more realistic models of the
hydrologic cycle The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, is a biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly const ...
, the weight of authority was behind the more fanciful theories. Perrault devoted the first part of his book, ''On the Origin of Springs'', to analyzing the ideas of his predecessors and what he called the "Common Opinion", rejecting most of it. He estimated the flow in the
Seine River ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributaries ...
and compared it with rainfall in the watershed, showing that the rainfall was easily enough to account for the flow in the river. This conclusion was later supported by a more rigorous quantitative analysis published by Edme Mariotte. With a series of experiments, Perrault showed that rain does not penetrate the soil beyond about . Thus, most of the rain that falls does not go into springs. Perrault went on to develop the theory of the
hydrologic cycle The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, is a biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly const ...
, correctly accounting for the roles of evaporation,
transpiration Transpiration is the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from aerial parts, such as leaves, stems and flowers. Water is necessary for plants but only a small amount of water taken up by the roots is used for growth ...
,
throughflow In hydrology, throughflow, a subtype of interflow (percolation), is the lateral unsaturated flow of water in the soil zone, typically through a highly permeable geologic unit overlying a less permeable one. Water thus returns to the surface, as ret ...
and surface runoff.


Notes


References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Perrault, Pierre 1608 births 1680 deaths French geologists French hydrologists French geophysicists Scientists from Paris