Porcherie biography

Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval (June 8 1851 - December 13 1940) was born in La Porcherie and was a French biophysicist and inventor of the moving-coil galvanometer and probably of the thermocouple ammeter. D'Arsonval was an important contributor to the emerging field of electrophysiology, the study of the effects of electricity on biological organisms, in the nineteenth century.

In 1881, d'Arsonval proposed tapping the thermal energy of the ocean. But it was d'Arsonval's student, Georges Claude who actually built the first OTEC plant in Cuba in 1930.

See also

Further reading

• Culotta, Charles A. (1970). "Arsonval, Arsène D'". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 302-305. ISBN 0684101149. 

Born in 1851 in La Porcherie, Haute-Vienne, Arsène d'Arsonval came from a family of doctors. First a high school student in Limoges, then at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, it was as a medical student that he attended Claude Bernard's lecture, where he made a name for himself by repairing a faulty galvanometer during a lecture. He became his assistant at the Collège de France in the early 1870s, until the professor's death. During this period, he gradually moved towards biological physics. He never practiced in a medical office or hospital, devoting himself to research and developing a parallel activity as an engineer.

In 1881, with the help of Paul Bert, he set up his biological physics laboratory at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) on rue Claude-Bernard, where he held the eponymous chair. This laboratory was later transferred to Nogent-sur-Marne, as the location was better suited to accommodate the bulky machines used by d'Arsonval.

He assisted Prof. Charles-ÉdouardBrown-Séquard, Claude Bernard's successor at the Collège de Fr

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