
Jean-Baptiste Biot was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who had a fascination with meteorites. He was born in Paris on 21 April 1774 to a treasury official named Joseph Biot. Like many other Frenchmen, Biot was educated at the École Polytechnique, a prestigious school founded by Lazare Carnot and Gaspard Monge, during the French Revolution.
Part of the reason he was fascinated by meteorites was because stories about them seemed unbelievable. For instance, at Barbotan, in the South of France, inhabitants reported that they sought refuge in their houses after a hail of stones rained down upon them on the evening of 24 July 1790. Most of the people in the area did not believe stories about meteorites, even though some specimens of the stones from this shower were preserved in people’s private collections. Continue reading