Napoleon as a Champion of the Natural Sciences
By Abdul Khan
At the age of nine Napoleon Bonaparte was sent to school in France. He immediately demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics. At the age of fifteen he was rejected for the position of assistant astronomer aboard La Perouse’s expedition to Australia. This defeat frustrated the young Napoleon. His ambitions in the natural sciences were surrendered to pursue a career in the army. In 1788 La Perouse went lost without a trace, and Napoleon Bonaparte began his illustrious career in the French Artillery.
At sixteen, Napoleon passed an exam given by Pierre-Simon Laplace for the Royal Artillery Corps at Brienne Military College. Napoleon would end up returning the favor by showering Laplace with favorable positions in his government, including Chancellor of the Senate. The Laplacian operator is now one of the most used mathematical tools of advanced physics.
Napoleon was not a straight A student, but his ability to excel in his passion was evident. “He's the best at math in the school,” a schoolmate once retorted to a teacher’s snide comment about Napoleon who was absent from class to practice on the artillery field. Dominique François Arago quoted the poet Népomucène Lemercier who wrote of Napoleon’s hindsight, 'If I had not become commander-in-chief of the army...I would have launched myself into the study of the exact sciences...And since I have always had success in my great undertakings, I would have become a highly distinguished scientist'.
In 1794 Napoleon made a significant contribution to the sciences that has had a tremendous impact on the advancement of the sciences. His formulation of the École “Polytechnique” in 1794 led the way to the creation of technical schools around the world. He established this institution on the remains of Jean Perronet’s “École des Pont et Chaussées” which had suffered during the Terror. The École Polytechnique became a tremendous success, hosting some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of the age. Napoleon’s name stuck, as we witness in the later creation of other institutions of higher learning such as the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Georgia Tech. More than a name however, the idea behind an institution dedicated to technology created great opportunities for scientific advancement. In 1797, twenty days after his return from Austria, Napoleon requested and received an honorary membership of the Scientific Division of the French Institute. It was this honor that allowed Napoleon to engineer one of the most daring scientific adventures of history, the Egyptian Campaign. Before doing so, however, he was able to fully participate in the Institute, giving reports on various inventions.
His
report that could be considered the most pertinent to today’s world was
concerning the first car. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built it in 1769. Cugnot called
his invention the “Fardier à vapeur”, or steam wagon. Along with the first car
came the first car accident. When the invention, whose top speed was four
kilometers per hour, crashed into a brick wall it would seem that all was
lost. Luckily, Cugnot created an
improved version in 1770, which was later found and preserved by Napoleon. Today it is on exhibit at the Paris'
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers.
Cugnot was expelled by the Revolution in 1789, but was later reinstated
by Napoleon shortly before his death in 1804.
Aside from his delivery of 17 reports to the Institute, Napoleon was involved socially with the academic elite of the time. He viewed them with respect and admiration, and they appreciated him for this. During this time he developed one of the most compelling academic military expeditions of history, the Egyptian Expedition. One hundred and sixty four of the greatest academics were to join him as he departed for Egypt in May 1798. The idea was to spread the glory of France to the center of ancient civilization, and to gain an academic understanding of this civilization for the glory of France. Among the most notable of Academics who joined Napoleon was Jean Baptist Joseph Fourier.
Fourier is best known for his development of a method to represent a function using a sinusoidal series. Two years after Napoleon’s return to Paris, Fourier finally returned home. While in the desert he had grown accustomed to the heat. He is said to have kept his living space at unbearably hot temperatures. Interestingly enough, his contribution to mathematics came about due to his mission to find a mathematical representation to describe heat transfer. In fact, the problem of heat transfer was to consume the Academy for a great while after the Egyptian expedition.
While in Egypt, Napoleon founded the Institute of Cairo modeled after the French Institute. The purpose of the Institute was twofold; to produce a volume dedicated to describing the discoveries made in Egypt and to answer twenty questions posed by Napoleon. Fourier along with Napoleon, Laplace, Lagrange and Monge became members of the mathematics division. Later in life Fourier would be commissioned to complete the writing of the Description of Egypt. It was not published until 1810 due to Napoleon’s insistence on making changes, even to the point of rewriting history.
Gaspard
Monge presided over the Institute of Cairo. It’s greatest achievement was the
discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799.
This slab was a writing transcribed in three languages. The stone was not completely understood
until the actual translation in 1822 by Champollion, but it would end up
opening up the ancient texts to academia.
Monge had befriended Napoleon in Italy while on a commission to select
the finest art for transferal to Paris.
It was Monge who brought the Treaty of Campo Formio, a stunning victory
for France and a terrible defeat for Austria, to Paris in October of 1797. In
the coming years, Napoleon would award Monge such distinctions as, “Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor” in 1804, “President of the Senate” in 1806, and “Count of Péluse” in 1808. Monge was often in attendance at
Napoleon’s dinner parties, and they were considered close friends. Monge is now
remembered as the father of differential geometry, which is now a prerequisite to
understanding Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
During the Egyptian expedition Napoleon used his love of science as a propaganda tool to glorify his expedition. His patriotism and passion united allowing him the aspiration that France would be center of scientific progress. Astronomical science was one if his favorite, "To divide the night between pretty women and a starry sky, and to spend the day working on one's observations and calculations, seems to me to be heaven on earth. Of all the sciences, astronomy is the one that has been most useful to reason and commerce. Astronomy particularly has need of long-distance communications and the Republic of Learning...”[1]
Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire, a leading naturalist who made contributions towards the development of evolution was another member of the expedition. He was an ardent admirer of Bonaparte, commenting on his ability to multi-task. Once, he claims to have witnessed Napoleon brushing off his clingy mistress while holding a conversation with an aide concerning provisioning, speaking to an ordnance officer, and holding a debate with Gaspard Monge concerning whether or not Newton had answered everything. Saint-Hilaire called him “the four-though Caesar”. Unbeknownst to Saint-Hilaire, Napoleon’s position in his debate with Monge heavily alluded to what we know refer to as quantum mechanics.[2]
Upon Napoleon’s return from Egypt the ground was set for the 18th of Brumaire. Napoleon was to take control of France, and with it he would succeed in a campaign of centralization fully supporting the advancement of science. As a state-builder, Napoleon would recreate the Institute of France into the National Institute. In 1800 he invited Volta to the National Institute. In 1801 Volta read his paper on electricity to an audience of which Napoleon was an enthusiastic member. Volta received a gold award on Napoleon’s recommendation. History would recognize this invention as the first electric battery.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It was no different for Napoleon Bonaparte. After crowning himself Emperor of France in 1804, he seems to have undergone disillusionment with the sciences. In that year he wrote, "Men are only as large as the monuments they leave." Napoleon’s passion for the advancement of the sciences gave way to dreams of building grand monuments to honor the glory of his military victories. He even got frustrated with Laplace, claiming “he brought the spirit of the infinitely small into the government" as an excuse to dismiss him from his duties as Chancellor of the Senate. The cannons were to be melted into heroic structures cast in iron. Unfortunately, France ironworks were far behind the time, and even though his effort produced a 106-foot arch over the Seine River and was able to complete a 129-foot iron dome over a circular grain exchange in 1812 (costing seven times the original estimate), it would take another 70 years before France would be able to produce such wonders as the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel tower which contains the names of 72 important scholars who founded the science and mathematics necessary for their completion, many of whom studied at the École Polytechnique[3] (1).
Napoleon’s attention turned away from the absolute sciences, and towards the practical sciences that would have immediate consequences on his military success. In 1811, Bernard Courtois, a manufacturer of saltpeter, noticed a purple colored deposit that would corrode his copper vats when he substituted seaweed ash for wooden ash in the extraction process. The new substance made it into the hands of the famous chemist, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac. In 1813 he postulated that it was a new element. He called it iodine, after the Greek word for violet[4].
In 1804 Gay-Lussac was able to climb to an altitude of 22,977 feet in a hydrogen balloon. This ended up creating a stir in the British media, which proceeded to theorize on the ability of Napoleon to “fly” his troops across the English Channel. (2)
Napoleon never did make it across the English Channel. His attention’s turned toward land and on his ability to march his army across the Russian terrain. In 1810 Nicolas Appert invented a new method of food preservation. He collected an outstanding prize that had been offered since 1795. Napoleon's Society for the Encouragement of Industry had promised it to someone who could discover a new method for preserving food. Appert discovered that heating food to get rid of microorganisms living in it and then immediately sealing it in wine bottles would keep the food from spoiling. Napoleon personally presented him with twelve thousand francs. Unfortunately, the method was not perfected for the Russia invasion. Ironically, the British industrialized the process using tin cans, and ended up using this method to deliver supplies to St. Helena that would complement Napoleon’s last dinners[5].
When Napoleon abdicated the thrown, the École Polytechnique was closed down, leaving the faculty with little to do. Sylvanus Thayer was an assistant professor at West Point Military Academy when he sailed across the Atlantic to visit European military schools. Thayer was able to spend time learning from the educational techniques of Monge, Laplace and other famous members of the École Polytechnic. He returned with close to one thousand of the best undergraduate books he could find. They are now on display at the West Point library along with one of the finest collections in the United States of pre-twentieth century mathematics textbooks, references and treatises. Aside from the historical aspect of Thayer’s contribution he was also able to establish an intensive mathematics program based on his learning’s during his visit to the École.[6]
On
Napoleon Bonaparte’s deathbed he pronounced his last words, “France, Chief of
Army, Josephine.” Around his neck he wore
a precious locket containing purple violets picked from her wondrous garden at
Malmaison. Theirs was an eternal love. He had never hesitated to flower her
with violet corsages throughout their courtship. Upon their maturation, he allowed her one of the most famous
gardens in all of Europe. They filled
it with thousands of horticultural specialties from around the world. Black swans, kangaroos and emus roamed
freely. The call of parakeets and even
a sulfur crested cockatoo[7], sounded out through
the garden. Josephine’s head gardener,
Felix Delahaye had made a visit to Van Diemen's Land in 1792 successfully
making a significant contribution to the field of botany. Josephine’s garden
was inspired by Napoleon’s interest in science and his love for Australia. The talented artist P. J. Redoute was taken
in by the royal family, and with their full support was able to illustrate a
ten-volume set containing depictions and descriptions of Australian Fauna. (3)
On the November 14, 1999 episode of the ABC radio show “Ocram’s Razor”, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton claims, “more illustrations of the Australian flora were published in Paris during the 16 years of the Napoleonic era than in the 90 years in Britain after Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast of Australia in 1770”. The Duchess’s assessment demonstrates how one man’s passion can lead to incredible accomplishment. Napoleon had been fascinated with Cook’s tales while attending school in France. This fascination remained with him in his success. During his reign he was able to finance a series of expeditions to Australia. These voyages led to the naming of over a hundred and fifty geographical landmarks on the eastern Australian coast. Many of the great landmarks were named after his family members. They were of course, lost, after British colonization. (4)
Napoleon was a General, but he could have been, and probably should have been a scientist. He surrounded himself with the sciences throughout his life, and to the end regretted his career decision. Perhaps it is for the best. As a general, and an Emperor, Napoleon was able to create a mystique around academia that has allowed it some of the most necessary institutions dedicated to the advancement of the natural sciences. He led a convention of scientists to the ancient civilization of the modern world. Some of these scientists laid down the mathematical framework necessary to achieve progress in the natural sciences. Others made significant advances in evolutionary theory, paleontology, and botany. His love of science must have touched many around him, including his wife who was responsible for stunning achievements within the field of botany and horticulture. What is most interesting is the much-ignored connection between Napoleon and some of the greatest scientists. One will never know how they affected Napoleon, or how Napoleon affected them. What we do know is that Napoleon was a member of that group of geniuses, and their histories are inextricably tied together.
References
(1) Steiner, F. H., Building with Iron: A Napoleonic Controversy. Technology and Culture, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 1981, pp. 700-724.
(2) Ballantyne,
R. M., Up in the Clouds, 2004 (original
1869), Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT.
(3) Hamilton,
Jill, Napoleon, the Empress and the Artist: the Story of Napoleon,
Josephine's Garden at Malmaison, Redoute and the Australian Plants, 1998,
Kangaroo Press, Sydney,
Australia.
(4) Cavanaugh, Tony, December 2000, Growing Australian, Australian Plants Society Newsletter, Victoria, Australia.
Bibliography
Castelot, Andre, Napoleon, 1971, Harper & Row, New York, NY.
Chandler, David, The Campaigns of Napoleon, 1966, The Macmillan Co., New York, NY.
Ellis, Geoffrey, Napoleon, pp. 176-177, 1997, Addison Wesley Inc, New York, NY.
Horne, Alistair, The Age of Napoleon, pp. 136-137, 2004, Random House Inc., New York, NY.
Lefebvre, Georges, Napoleon, from Tilsit to Waterloo 1807-1815, pp. 276-277, 1990, Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
Lyons, Martyn, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution, 1994, St. Martin’s Press Inc., New York, NY.
Pannabecker, John R., School for Industry: L'Ecole d'Arts et Metiers of Chalons-sur-Marne under Napoleon and the Restoration, Technology and Culture – Vol. 43, #2, pp. 254-290, April 2002, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.