Jean Baptiste Perrin was
born in Lille, September 30, 1870, where he was educated at the
École Normal Supérieure, becoming an assistant in
physics during 1894-1897, when he began his researches on cathode
rays and X-rays. He received the degree of "docteur ès
sciences" in 1897 for a thesis on cathode and Röntgen rays
and was appointed, in the same year, to a readership in physical
chemistry at the Sorbonne, University of Paris. He became Professor
here in 1910; a post which he held till 1940, when the Germans
invaded his country.
His earliest work was on the nature of cathode rays, and their
nature was proved by him to be that of negatively charged
particles. He also studied the effect of the action of X-rays on
the conductivity of gases. In addition, he worked on
fluorescence, the disintegration of radium, and the emission and
transmission of sound. The work for which he is best known is the
study of colloids and, in particular, the so-called Brownian
movement. His results in this field were able to confirm
Einstein's theoretical studies in which it was shown that
colloidal particles should obey the gas laws, and hence to
calculate Avogadro's number N, the number of molecules per
grammolecule of a gas. The value thus calculated agreed
excellently with other values obtained by entirely different
methods in connection with other phenomena, such as that found by
him as a result of his study of the sedimentation equilibrium in
suspensions containing microscopic gamboge particles of uniform
size. In this way the discontinuity of matter was proved by him
beyond doubt: an achievement rewarded with the 1926 Nobel
Prize.
Perrin was the author of many books and scientific papers. His
book Les Atomes, published in 1913, sold 30,000 copies up
to 1936. His principal papers were: "Rayons cathodiques et rayons
X" (Cathode rays and X-rays), Ann. Phys., 1897; Les
Principes (The principles), Gauthier-Villars, 1901;
"Electrisation de contact" (Contact electrificaton), J. Chim.
Phys., 1904-1905; "Réalité moléculaire"
(Molecular reality), Ann. Phys., 1909; "Matière et
Lumière" (Matter and light), Ann. Phys., 1919;
"Lumière et Reaction chimique" (Light and chemical
reaction), Conseil Solvay de Chimie, 1925.
Many honours were conferred on him for his scientific work; the
Joule Prize of the Royal Society in 1896, the Vallauri Prize of
Bologna in 1912 and, in 1914, the La Caze Prize of the Paris
Academy of Sciences.
He held honorary doctorates of the Universities of Brussels,
Liege,
Ghent,
Calcutta, New York, Princeton, Manchester, and Oxford. He was twice appointed a member of
the Solvay Committee at Brussels in 1911 and in 1921. He held
memberships of the Royal Society (London) and of the Academies of
Sciences of Belgium, Sweden, Turin, Prague, Rumania, and China. In 1923 he was elected
to the French Academy of Sciences. He became a Commander of the
Legion of Honour in 1926, and was also made Commander of the
British Empire and of the Order of Leopold (Belgium).
Perrin was the creator of the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, an organization offering to most promising French
scientists - whose scientific talents would otherwise be lost - a
career outside the University. It was due to this institute that
Frédéric
Joliot could carry out his magnificent investigations. In
addition to this, he founded the Palais de la Découverte
(Palace of discovery); he was also responsible for the
establishment of the Institut d'Astrophysique, in Paris, and for
the construction of the large Observatoire de Haute Provence;
without his prestige and his power of persuasion the Institut de
Biologie Physico-Chimique would never have come into being.
Perrin was an officer in the engineer corps during the 1914-1918
War. When the Germans invaded his country in 1940 he escaped to
the U.S.A., where he died on the 17th of April, 1942. After the
War, in 1948, his remains were transferred to his fatherland by
the battleship Jeanne d'Arc, and buried in the Panthéon.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1926