Benjamin Franklin is another figure of science

The history of science is replete with eaten characters of ambition, mistreated by authorities and slandered by envious colleagues. As Marie Curie which is believed to know everything, so it is present in the hexagonal collective imagination. It is a historian American, Barbara Goldsmith, specialist of the biographies of famous women, proposing the "intimate Portrait of a woman of exception" (1). Since the transfer of the ashes of Pierre and Marie Curie to Pantheon in April 1995, the couple became one of the icons of the Republic, in the same way that Zola, Hugo, or Voltaire. In paying tribute to the discoverers of the natural radioactivity, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes had found the right formula: "the collective memory of the people of France and the beauty of the sacrifice."

Marya Salomee Sklodowska life is a succession of exploits and tests overcome with a permanent stubbornness. First woman to a licence in France of physics and mathematics, first female professor at the Sorbonne and, course, first woman to win a double Nobel Prize. Once with her husband (1903) and alone again (1911). But behind an obvious facility for study and an exceptional power of work, the life of Marya, colloquially called Mania, is full of twists and turns. It begins in a Polish family of Warsaw fiercely patriotic and fiercely opposed to the Russian occupying forces. Mania is a brilliant student. She arrives in Paris and lived near the gare du Nord where to start two terrible years of hardship and sacrifice to finance his studies. At this time the Sorbonne has only 23 women on 2,000 students.

A benefactor of mankind

The suite is a succession of opportunities. She was offered a scholarship to study the properties of steels. Professional circumstances make it meet Pierre Curie. At age 35, the learned still lives with his parents. It is a famous and influential scientist, discoverer of the piezoelectric effect with his brother Jacques. Marie and Pierre married. Mania is passionate about a recent discovery: x-rays. The suite reads like a novel high water.

After the death of Pierre (1906), she raises her two children virtually alone. His relationship with Paul Langevin won acid criticism of the Parisian establishment. War broke out in the summer 1914 then that his laboratory at the Institute of radium is about to be completed: "A 47-year-old woman, prematurely greying discreetly wearing a heavy coat of alpaca, spawned a path among the crowd of men responsible for baggage, women and children ranging in all directions", says Barbara Goldsmith.

Marie fighting all his life to fund its work and the future of his daughters. It is the United States, where it is considered a benefactor of humanity, that will come salvation, through popular subscription.

Benjamin Franklin is another figure of science. A sort of cumulard, hungry for success and advocate for scientific research. A "citizen of the world and man of the Enlightenment" according to his French biographer Jean Audouze (2). This American is not only the inventor of the lightning rod. The texts in his biography show the amazing universality of this tower Bostonian turn printer, journalist, scientist, inventor, philosopher, diplomat and statesman.

A builder of engineering

Elected in 1776 President of the Philadelphia convention to establish a new form of Government, he was selected to follow the negotiations with the Court of France. In total, he spent nine years in France. He died in 1790, at the age of 84, leaving behind a collection of letters written in the precious style of the time. Practicality and handyman engineering, Franklin was "a happy science", more attentive to the experimentation to the concept. He is interested to spouts and vortex formation and the properties of air and fire. He experimented with recklessness first not the electricity fairy and analysis in detail forms and yields of the "chauffoirs" (chimney). This observer-born note that evaporation of a liquid product of the cold, invented the glass harmonica and produced some mathematical oddities including squares and magic circles. Jean Audouze, this archetype of the American citizen "is one of the fathers of America, to the origin of the miracle of a nation based on individual meritocracy".

Georges Cuvier is a naturalist really spoilt by nature: "he came to the world with an If sh constitution during its first years, he promised only to reach adolescence," will write more later one of his rare confidentes. At the age of six, his intelligence and knowledge are unusual. He surprised the adults in déclamant worms "as a man of twenty years would have done."

A workaholic

His passion for Botany and natural history begins it as very early. Good at drawing, he devours the richly illustrated books of his time. His biographer, Philippe tack, former Director of the Muséum d'histoire naturelle of Paris and specialist of the dinosaurs, pays him a well-deserved tribute (3). Cuvier is a workaholic. He dissects lines of Woodlice, cats, and Octopus, draw beetle, painted birds, records his observations. He wrote long missives to the scientists of his time who share his questions. The time is rich in controversies on the origin of species and races and Cuvier lends itself to the game. It provides the basis of comparative anatomy, is interested in the past of the Earth and the origin of natural disasters. In 1795, full revolutionary fury, he is appointed to Professorial duties at the Museum and at the Central School. He was 26 years old. "In nine months, a young provincial House but safe from him and his qualities of naturalist from the shadows", said Philippe tack, admiring this explosive destiny.

These three readings of summer focusing on masterful careers have one thing in common: the life of a discoverer of the laws of nature is rarely a long quiet river flowing peacefully between two promotions in seniority.