François Arago — physicist, statesman, and perpetual secretary of the French Academy — turned the official éloge into literature. Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men collects his celebrated lives, Fourier’s above all: revolution, Egypt, prefecture and the analytical theory of heat, told by a man who knew his subjects and their century intimately.
Arago’s éloges remain primary sources and superb reading at once. Download the free EPUB for French science remembered by its most eloquent insider.