Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/204

Rh Pierre Prevost was born in 1751, and was originally destined to follow the profession of his father, who was one of the pastors of Geneva : at the age of twenty, however, he abandoned the study of theology for that of law, the steady pursuit of which, in time, gave way to his ardent passion for literature and philosophy : at the age of twenty-two, he became private tutor in a Dutch family, and after- wards accepted a similar situation in the family of M. Delessert, first at Lyons, and afterwards at Paris. It was in this latter city that he commenced the publication of his translation of Euripides, beginning with the tragedy of Orestes ; — a work which made him advantageously known to some of the leading men in that great me- tropolis of literature, and led to his appointment, in 1780, to the professorship of philosophy in the college of Nobles, and also to a place in the Academy of Berlin, on the invitation of Frederick the Great. Being thus established in a position where the cultiva- tion of literature and philosophy became as much a professional duty as the natural accomplishment of his own wishes and tastes, he commenced a life of more than ordinary literary activity and productiveness. In the course of the four years which he passed at Berlin, he published Observations sur les methodes employees pour enseigner la morale ; sur la tJieorie des gains fortuits ; sur le mouve- ment progressif du centre de gravite de tout le systeme solaire ; sur Vorigine des vitesses projectiles ; sur V economic des anciens gouverne- ments ; sur Vetat des finances d Angleterre ; and he also completed the three first volumes of his translation of Euripides. There were, in fact, few departments of literature or philosophy which were not comprehended in the extensive range of his studies and publications.

In the year 1784, he returned to Geneva to attend the death-bed of his father, when he was induced to accept the chair of belles lettres in the University, — an appointment, which he found on trial little suited to his taste, and which he shortly afterwards resigned. For some years after this period, he was compelled more by circum- stances than by inclination to partake largely in those political dis- cussions, which, for some years, agitated his native city, and which afterwards, resumed upon a wider theatre, shook to its centre the whole framework of European society; but he gradually withdrew himself from political life on his appointment to the chair of na- tural philosophy in 1792, and devoted himself from thenceforth, with renewed activity and ardour, to pursuits which were most con- genial to his tastes.

In 1790 M. Prevost published his Memoire sur Vequilihre du feu, and in the following year his Recherches sur la chaleur : these important memoirs were followed by many others on the same subject in various scientific journals ; and the general results of all his researches and discoveries were exhibited, in a systematic form, in his well-known work Sur le calorique rayonnant, which was published in 1809, and in which he fully developed his Theory of Exchanges, and was enabled to give a consistent explanation of the principal facts which were at that time known respecting the nature and propagation of heat.