Joseph Bertrand, himself perpetual secretary of the institution he describes, wrote L’Académie des sciences et les académiciens de 1666 à 1793 as an insider’s history of French science’s great age: the founding under Colbert, the expeditions that measured the Earth, the disputes and dynasties of the Cassinis, Clairaut, d’Alembert, Lagrange and Lavoisier, down to the Revolution that closed the old Academy — and executed its greatest chemist.
Bertrand writes with wit, authority and a mathematician’s eye for what mattered. Download the free EPUB, in French, for science under the ancien régime from the inside.