Jean Antoine, regius professor of physics in the College of Navarre, and member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, of the Royal Society of London, of the Institution of Bologna, and of the Academy of Sciences of Erfurt, was born at Pimbré, in the diocese of Noyon, on the 17th of November 1700. He was the son of respectable but not wealthy parents, who, to make up for the want of riches, determined to give their son a good education. They sent him to the College of Clermont in Beauvaisin, and afterwards to Beauvais, there to finish his introductory studies. The progress which he made in the different classes decided them to send him to study philosophy at Paris; and having intended him for the clerical order, they considered the strictness and purity of his morals, together with his unwearied application to study, as sufficient proofs of his vocation. The young Nollet yielded without reluctance to the wishes of his parents. As soon as he was capable of showing an inclination for any thing, he had discovered a taste for physics; but this had not become his ruling passion; and he therefore sacrificed it to the study of scholastic divinity, to which he wholly dedicated himself during the time of his probation in 1728. No sooner had he been invested with the deaconship, than he solicited and obtained a license to preach. This new occupation, however, did not make him entirely lose sight of those studies which had first engaged his attention, and insensibly began to occupy a greater portion of his time, which was now more equally divided between theology and the sciences. The latter, however, prevailed; and thenceforth he entered upon the study of physics with an ardour which was only increased by that kind of privation to which he had been long subject. He was received into the Society of Arts established at Paris under the patronage of the Count de Clermont. In 1730, the Abbé Nollet was engaged in a work in conjunction with Reaumur and Dufay of the Academy of Sciences. In 1734 he went to London in company with MM. Dufay, Duhamel, and Jussieu; and his merit procured him a place in the Royal Society without any solicitation. Two years afterwards, he went to Holland, where he formed an intimate connection with Desaguliers, s'Gravesande, and Muschenbroeck. On his return to Paris, he resumed the course of experimental physics which he had begun in 1735, and which he continued till 1760. These courses of physics first suggested the idea of giving particular courses in other branches of science, such as in chemistry, anatomy, and