Jean Perrin

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For the tutor and educational author, see Jean Baptiste Perrin (fl. 1786). For the Swiss composer, see Jean Perrin (composer). For the IT entrepreneur, see Jean Georges Perrin.

Jean Perrin
Perrin in 1926
Born
Jean Baptiste Perrin

(1870-09-30)30 September 1870
Lille, French Republic
Died17 April 1942(1942-04-17) (aged 71)
New York City, US
Resting placePanthéon, Paris, France
Alma mater
Known forWork on sedimentation equilibrium
Spouse
Henriette Duportal
​
​
(m. 1897; died 1938)​
PartnerNine Choucroun (1938–42)
ChildrenFrancis Perrin
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsAtomic physics
InstitutionsUniversity of Paris (1897–1940)
ThesisRayons cathodiques et rayons de Röntgen. Études expérimentales (1897)
Doctoral advisors
Notable students
Signature

Jean Baptiste Perrin (French: [ʒɑ̃ batist pɛʁɛ̃]; 30 September 1870 – 17 April 1942) was a French atomic physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids (sedimentation equilibrium), verified Albert Einstein's explanation of this phenomenon and thereby confirmed the atomic nature of matter. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926.[3]

Education and career

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Jean Baptiste Perrin was born on 30 September 1870 in Lille, France. He attended the École normale supérieure, where he was an assistant from 1894 to 1897. In 1897, he received his D.Sc. from the Sorbonne for a thesis on cathode rays and X-rays. In the same year, he was appointed a lecturer in physical chemistry at the Sorbonne, and in 1910 became a professor.

Ioan Cantacuzino (left) with Perrin in 1931

Research

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Jean Perrin in 1908

In 1895, Perrin showed that cathode rays were of negative electric charge in nature. He determined the Avogadro constant by several methods. He explained solar energy as due to the thermonuclear reactions of hydrogen.

In 1901, Perrin proposed a hypothesis that each atom has a positively charged nucleus, similarly to Hantaro Nagaoka later, but never developed it further.[4] It came to be known the Rutherford model.

By the mid-1900s, Perrin was interested in statistical mechanics questions, which are close to the study of Brownian motion.[5] Following Albert Einstein's publication (1905) of a theoretical explanation of Brownian motion in terms of atoms, Perrin (along with Joseph Ulysses Chaudesaigues who was working in Perrin's lab) did the experimental work to test and verify Einstein's predictions, thereby providing data that would settle the century-long dispute about John Dalton's atomic theory, before the end of the decade.[6][7][5] Carl Benedicks argued Perrin should receive the Nobel Prize in Physics; Perrin received the prize in 1926 for this and other work on the discontinuous structure of matter, which put a definite end to the long struggle regarding the question of the physical reality of molecules.[8]

Perrin was the author of a number of books and dissertations. Most notable of his publications were: "Rayons cathodiques et rayons X"; "Les Principes"; "Electrisation de contact"; "Réalité moléculaire"; "Matière et Lumière"; "Lumière et Reaction chimique".

Perrin was also the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Joule Prize of the Royal Society in 1896 and the La Caze Prize of the French Academy of Sciences. He was twice appointed a member of the Solvay Committee at Brussels in 1911 and in 1921. He also held memberships with the Royal Society of London and with the Academies of Sciences of Belgium, Sweden, Turin, Prague, Romania and China. He became a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1926 and was made Commander of the Order of Léopold (Belgium).

In 1919, Perrin proposed that nuclear reactions can provide the source of energy in stars. He realized that the mass of a helium atom is less than that of four atoms of hydrogen, and that the mass-energy equivalence of Einstein implies that the nuclear fusion (4 H → He) could liberate sufficient energy to make stars shine for billions of years.[9] A similar theory was first proposed by American chemist William Draper Harkins in 1915.[10][11] It remained for Hans Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker to determine the detailed mechanism of stellar nucleosynthesis during the 1930s.[12]

In 1927, Perrin founded the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique together with chemist André Job and physiologist André Mayer. Funding was provided by Edmond James de Rothschild.[13] In 1937, Perrin established the Palais de la Découverte, a science museum in Paris.

Perrin is considered the founding father of the National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)). Following a petition by Perrin signed by over 80 scientists, among them eight Nobel Prize laureates, the French education minister set up the Conseil Supérieur de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Research Council) in April 1933. In 1936, Perrin, now an undersecretary for research, founded the Service Central de la Recherche Scientifique (French Central Agency for Scientific Research).[13] Both institutions were merged under the CNRS umbrella on 19 October 1939.[14]

Autochrome portrait by Auguste Léon, 1918

Personal life and death

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Perrin was an atheist and a socialist.[15][16] He was an officer in the Engineer Corps during World War I. In 1915, he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Directorate of Inventions for National Defense, which aimed to coordinate French laboratories in the war effort.

In 1897, Perrin married Henriette Duportal (1869–1938), with whom he had a son, Francis, who later became a physicist.[17].

After Henriette's death in 1938, Nine Choucroun became Perrin's partner. In June 1940, when the Germans invaded France, he and Choucroun escaped to Casablanca on the ocean liner Massilia, with part of the French government. In December 1941, they boarded the SS Excambion to New York City, arriving on 23 December.[18]

Perrin died on 17 April 1942 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City at the age of 71.[citation needed]

After the War, in 1948, his remains were transported back to France by the cruiser Jeanne d'Arc and are buried in the Panthéon.[citation needed]

Works

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Atomes, 1913
  • Les Principes. Exposé de thermodynamique (1901) / Principles of thermodynamics
  • Traité de chimie physique. Les principes (1903) / Physical chemistry principles
  • Les Preuves de la réalité moléculaire (1911) / Evidences of molecular reality
  • Atomes (in French). Paris: Alcan. 1913.
  • Les Atomes (1913) / The Atoms
  • Matière et lumière (1919) / Matter and light
  • En l'honneur de Madame Pierre Curie et de la découverte du Radium (1922) / In honor of Mrs Pierre Curie and the discovery of Radium
  • Les Éléments de la physique (1929) / Elements of physics
  • L'Orientation actuelle des sciences (1930) / Current orientation of sciences
  • Les Formes chimiques de transition (1931) / Transition chemical forms
  • La Recherche scientifique (1933) / Scientific research
  • Cours de chimie. 1ère partie. Chimie générale et métalloïdes (1935) / Chemistry courses: general chemistry and metalloids
  • Grains de matière et grains de lumière (1935) / Grains of matter and grains of light
    • Existence des grains / Existence of grains
    • Structure des atomes / Structure of atoms
    • Noyaux des atomes / Kernels of atoms
    • Transmutations provoquées / Induced transmutations
  • Paul Painlevé: l'homme (1936) / Paul Painlevé: the man
  • L'Organisation de la recherche scientifique en France (1938) / The organisation of scientific research in France
  • À la surface des choses (1940–1941) / At the surface of things
    • Masse et gravitation (1940) / Mass and gravitation
    • Lumière (1940) / Light
    • Espace et temps (1940) / Space and time
    • Forces et travail (1940) / Forces and work
    • Relativité (1941) / Relativity
    • Électricité (1941) / Electricity
    • L'énergie (1941) / Energy
    • Évolution (1941) / Evolution
  • L'Âme de la France éternelle (1942) / The soul of eternal France
  • Pour la Libération (1942) / For Liberation
  • La Science et l'Espérance (1948) / Science and hope
  • Oeuvres scientifiques de Jean Perrin (1950) / Scientific works of Jean Perrin

References

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  1. ^ Townsend, J. S. (1943). "Jean Baptiste Perrin. 1870-1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 4 (12): 301–326. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1943.0004. S2CID 123521634.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Jean Perrin - Physics Tree". academictree.org. Retrieved 2 September 2025.
  3. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1926". Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 1 December 2008. Retrieved 13 November 2022.
  4. ^ Gbur, Gregory (28 April 2009). "Who first suggested the nuclear atom?". Skulls in the Stars. Retrieved 17 September 2024.
  5. ^ a b Genthon, Arthur (2020). "The concept of velocity in the history of Brownian motion". Eur. Phys. J. H. 45: 49–105. arXiv:2006.05399. doi:10.1140/epjh/e2020-10009-8.
  6. ^ M. Chaudesaigues (1908). "Le mouvement Brownien et la formule d'Einstein". Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences (in French). 147: 1044–1046.
  7. ^ Jean Perrin (1909). "Le Mouvement Brownien et la Réalité Moleculaire". Annales de chimie et de physique (in French). 18 (8è série): 5–114.
  8. ^ Mauro Dardo (2004). Nobel Laureates and Twentieth-Century Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 114–116. ISBN 0-521-54008-9. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
  9. ^ Why the Stars Shine D.Selle, Guidestar (Houston Astronomical Society), October 2012, pp. 6–8
  10. ^ N.C.Panda (1991). Māyā in Physics. Motilal Banarsidess (Delhi). p. 173. ISBN 81-208-0698-0.
  11. ^ Robert S. Mulliken (1975). "William Draper Harkins 1873–1951" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs. 47. National Academy of Sciences: 48–81.
  12. ^ John North, Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology (University of Chicago Press, p. 545)
  13. ^ a b Zeitoun, Charline (September 2009). "Le CNRS a 70 ans". CNRS le journal. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
  14. ^ Guthleben, Denis (3 November 2010). "Un peu d'histoire... La création du CNRS". Comité pour l'histoire du CNRS. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
  15. ^ Bernard Valeur; Jean-Claude Brochon (2001). New Trends in Fluorescence Spectroscopy: Applications to Chemical and Life Sciences. Springer. p. 17. ISBN 978-3-540-67779-6. Jean and Francis Perrin held similar political and philosophical ideas. Both were socialists and atheists.
  16. ^ Nye, Mary Jo (1975). "Science and Socialism: The Case of Jean Perrin in the Third Republic". French Historical Studies. 9 (1): 141–169. doi:10.2307/286009. ISSN 0016-1071. JSTOR 286009.
  17. ^ Marcel Froissart. "Professeurs disparus: Hommage à Francis Perrin". Collège de France (in French). Archived from the original on 7 October 2011. Retrieved 24 May 2023. Fils de Jean PERRIN, Prix Nobel de Physique en 1926.
  18. ^ Diane Dosso, " Le plan de sauvetage des scientifiques français, New York, 1940–1942 ", Revue de synthèse, Vol. 127, Nr. 2, octobre 2006, pp. 429–451 (in French)
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