Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet

In 1746 the abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet, a physicist who popularized science in France, discharged a Leyden jar in front of King Louis XV by sending current through a chain of 180 Royal Guards. In another demonstration, Nollet used wire made of iron to connect a row of Carthusian…

…solvent, was first described by Abbé J.A. Nollet, who became professor of experimental physics at the College of Navarre. The semipermeable membranes required to produce the fluid flow that characterizes osmotic phenomena initially came from biological sources; French scientist René Dutrochet wrote in 1828, “it appears from these new studies…