Talk:Edme Mariotte

	France portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject France, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FranceWikipedia:WikiProject FranceTemplate:WikiProject FranceFrance articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Physics: Biographies Low‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Biographies Taskforce.

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group.

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mariotte's law: Correction: 1676 → 1679[edit]

The article's "Discovery" section states that Edme Mariotte independently discovered Boyle's law of gases in 1676. This date, 1676, is cited in a number of sources, but it's wrong. The correct date is 1679.

The evidence for the 1679 date is:

Mariotte's essay De la nature de l'air was reviewed by the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1679. See: (Anon.) (1733) "Sur la nature de l'air," Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1 : 270-278. On the upper margin of each page, the date "1679" appears quite clearly.

Mariotte's essay De la nature de l'air was also reviewed in the Journal des Sçavans (later: Journal des Savants) on 20 November 1679. See: (Anon.) (20 November 1679) "Essais de physique, … ," Journal des Sçavans, pp. 265-269.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) also states that Mariotte's essay De la nature de l'air was published in 1679. See: Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), vol. 9.

In neither the Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences nor the Journal des Sçavans does the reviewer state that Mariotte had published anything on the subject previously. Indeed, I reviewed the accounts of both journals for the year 1676 and I found nothing in either mentioning any research by Mariotte on the subject of air.

Additional, very strong evidence that Mariotte did not write his essay De la nature de l'air in 1676 is provided by two other sources:

In September 1677, Mariotte wrote a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in which he discussed his experiments with air in mercury barometers. Here he does not mention his essay De la nature de l'air ; nevertheless, he does mention the relation between the volume of air in a mercury barometer and its pressure. From p. 219: After explaining that when air in the barometer tube doubles its volume, its pressure is halved, "On a trouvé le mesme en d'autres proportions, … " (One found the same in other proportions, … ). That is, the same relation between the pressure and the volume of the confined air holds proportionately for other initial volumes, and he then gives an example in which, when the confined air expands four-fold, its pressure drops to a quarter of its initial value. This is Boyle's / Mariotte's law. See: Heinz-Jürgen Hess, ed., Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Dritte Reihe : Mathematischer Naturwissenschaftlicher und Technischer Briefwechsel, Zweiter Band : 1676-1679 [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Collected Writings and Letters. Third series: Mathematical, scientific and technical correspondence, 2nd volume: 1676-1679] (Berlin, D.D.R.: Akademie Verlag Berlin, 1987), pp. 218-220.

In 1678, Mariotte published his Essai de Logique. On pages 183-194, he poses (p. 184) and solves the problem of determining how much air must be introduced into a mercury barometer in order to reduce the height of the mercury in the barometer by a given amount. Again, nowhere does he mention his essai De la nature de l'air as he solves this problem — even though he again presents Boyle's / Mariotte's law. From p. 191: " … on conclura le verité de ce principe d'experience; sçavoir que l'air se condense à proportion des poids dont il est chargé, … " ( … one will conclude the truth of this experimental principle; to know that air is condensed in proportion to the weight with which it is loaded … ). See: Edme Mariotte, Essai de Logique … (Paris, France: Estienne Michallet, 1678).

Further investigation into the possible source of the error revealed:

The Biographie Universelle (1820) gives the date of Mariotte's De la nature de l'air as 1679. See: Joseph Fr. Michaud and ‎Louis Gabriel Michaud, ed.s, Biographie Universelle … vol. 27, (Paris, France: L. G. Michaud, 1820), p. 174. From p. 174: "Son Discours sur l'air, qui parut en 1679, renferme une suite d'expériences intéressantes, alor absolument neuves." (His Discourse on air, which was published in 1679, contained a series of interesting experiments, at that time absolutely new.)
However, the Nouvelle biographie universelle (1860) gives the date of Mariotte's De la nature de l'air as 1676. See: Hoefer, ed., Nouvelle biographie universelle … vol. 23, (Paris, France: Didot Frères, Fils et Cie., 1860), p. 800.

It is the date of 1676 that was listed in the Nouvelle biographie universelle (1860) which seems to have been the source of the error. See, for example:

Footnote on p. 76 of: George F. Rodwell (August 13, 1864) "On the supposed nature of air prior to the discovery of oxygen [continued]," The Chemical News, 10 (245) : 74-77.
Footnote on p. iv of the Preface in: P. G. Tait, Sketch of thermodynamics (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edmonston and Douglas, 1868).

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 01:47, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Edme Mariotte. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091111172011/http://num-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr:8080/view/authors/Mariotte,_Edme.html to http://num-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr:8080/view/authors/Mariotte,_Edme.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:42, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]