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Pierre Lecomte du Nouy papers, 1883-1972 (bulk 1917-1949)

MS 174

Biographical Note

French bio-physicist and philosopher born in Paris on December 20, 1883. He obtained his degrees of LL.B; PH.B; SC.B; PH.D; and SC.D at the Sorbonne in Paris and graduated from Law School, though he never practiced. A descendant of writers and artists, who included Corneille, he was brought up in free thinking, intellectual circles and started life by writing short stories as well as several plays which were produced with success. His deep interest in philosophy and the belief that to progress, it would, henceforth, have to be based on science, led to his taking up his scientific studies again under the Curies, Appell, and others.

The outbreak of World War I sent him to the front as a lieutenant in the "Chasseurs à pied" but his knowledge of mechanics and driving soon put him in command of a motor section with headquarters at Compiègne, where he met Dr. Alexis Carrel, with whom he worked in his spare hours on the problem of the cicatrization of wounds. At Dr. Carrel's request he was attached in 1915 to his unit where he remained until the end of the war, with the exception of a short mission to the United States.

In 1920 he joined the Rockefeller Institute in New York as an associate member, leaving there in 1927 to go to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he created the first laboratory of molecular bio-physics in Europe. Heisenberg's theory of indeterminism, as well as the laws of chance, coupled with years of work on living matter by means of physical methods, had convinced him that life and the steady progress of evolution cannot be accounted for by modern physical laws and that materialism can no longer be based on science. His articles and lectures on the subject aroused the enmity of the left wing and forced his resignation from the Pasteur Institute in 1936. The title of Director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne did not provide the laboratories necessary to contine his scientific work and after a trip around the world he wrote L'Homme devant la Science which shows that the laws of chance cannot account for life and evolution. Modern laboratories were being built for him by an industrialist outside of Paris when World War II broke out. Conditions under German occupation prevented experimental work and he devoted himself to writing L'Avenir de l'Esprit, published in 1941 and crowned in 1942 by the French Academy. In 1944 the University of Lausanne awared the Arnold Raymond prize for the most valuable contribution to the philosophy of science to these two books and Le Tempe et la Vie (Bilogical Time) which had come out in 1936. This book gave his new concept of biological time differing from sidereal time, deduced from his experiments on the cicatrization of wounds.

Together with his wife, an American, whom he married in 1923, he escaped from Paris at the end of 1942, reaching the United States of America in January 1943. La Dignité Humaine, which developed some of hthe ideas in his first two books and stressed moral and spiritual conclusions, was published by Brentano in New York in 1944. That year he covered 35,000 miles, lecturing for the YMCA and the USO on his experiences in Paris under the Germans. Human Destiny, a synthesis of his three French books was published in 1947, shorltly before his death on September 22, 1947 after a long and painful illness.

Lecomte de Noüy's scientific work can be classed in four principal groups:

1915-1920--Cicatrization of wounds--He established the mathematical formula based on the surface of the wound and age of the patient and could thus calculate beforehand the exact date of cicatrizatiuon and scientifically check the treatments employed to deduce the physiological age.

1920-1926--Absorption phenomena of surface tension--The tensiometer which won a Franklin Institute award in 1923, enabled him to provide evidence of the existence of monomolecular layers which in turn disclosed three minima in the surface tension of sodium oleate and enabled him to clculate the three dimensions of the molecule as well as the dimension of the ovalbumine molecule and give a determination of the Avogadro number in excellent accord with previous ones.

Physico-chemical characteristics of Immunity--The study of thin layers of serum on water led to the discovery of a physico-chemical phenomenon not due to immunization and showed that the serum is constituted of asymetric prismatic molecules capable of being polarized in monomolecular layers.

1927-1933--Experiments made by heating serum at a temperature above 55 degrees Celcius. Showed an increase in surface tension, viscosity, rotatory power, rotatory dispersion, etc. Altogether twelve new phenomena were discovered, proving that serum and plasma are true solutions molecularly dispersed and not colloids as had been thought hereto fore. Most of these experiments were based on new insturments and new techniques, which have since been extensively used in scientific and industrial laboratories. Amongst these figure the tensionmeter, a microviscosimeter, an ionometer for the measurement of pH up to the 4th and 5th decimal points and an automatic spectrophotometer in the infra-red.

Scope and Content Note

Scientific manuscripts, lectures, articles and lab manuals relate to Lecomte de Noüy's research in biophysics; performed chiefly at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, 1920-1927, and the Pasteur Institute, Paris, 1927-1936. After 1936, his writings concern philosophy of science; specifically as it relates to evolution, religion, and teleology. Manuscripts present include L'Avenir de l'Espirit, La Dignité Humaine, L'Homme Devant la Science, Expose des Travaux, Le Temps et la Vie (Biological Time), and Human Destiny. Correspondents include Alexis Carrel, Pierre Devaux, charles Guye, Ferdinand Hercík, and Charles Lindbergh. Correspondence and articles provide information about Lecomte de Noüy's association with the American USO from 1944-1945. His plays and short stories appear to have been written from 1902-1914. Photographs are of Lecomte, his laboratory, and his family.

Some materials are in French.

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Pierre du Nouy papers(MS 174).Special Collections, University of Arizona Libraries.

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