Editing Jean-Baptiste Biot (section)

== Biography ==
Jean-Baptiste Biot was born in [[Paris]] on 21 April 1774 the son of Joseph Biot, a treasury official.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |title=Former Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783–2002: Part 1 (A–J) |author=C D Waterston |author2=A Macmillan Shearer |publisher=[[Royal Society of Edinburgh]] |isbn=090219884X |date=July 2006 |access-date=18 September 2015 |archive-date=24 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124115814/http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |url-status=dead}}</ref>

He was educated at Lyceum Louis-le-Grand and [[École Polytechnique]] in 1794.<ref>{{cite book|title=Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862|date=1863|publisher=[[D. Appleton & Company]]|location=New York|page=683|url=https://archive.org/stream/1862appletonsan02newyuoft#page/n690/mode/1up}}</ref> Biot served in the [[artillery]] before he was appointed professor of mathematics at [[Beauvais]] in 1797. He later went on to become a professor of physics at the [[Collège de France]] around 1800, and three years later was elected as a member of the [[French Academy of Sciences]]. In July 1804, Biot joined [[Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac]] for the first scientific hot-air balloon ride to measure how the Earth's magnetic field varies with elevation (NNDB 2009, Reese 2004,<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Gay-lussac, Balloon Pioneer |url=https://cen.acs.org/articles/82/i25/Newscripts.html |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=Chemical & Engineering News |language=en}}</ref> O'Connor and Robertson 1997). They reached a height of 4000 metres (13,100 feet) (NNDB 2009, Reese 2004).  Later, in Sept. 1804, a solo flight took  Gay-Lussac up to 7010 metres (23,000&nbsp;ft) (quite dangerous without supplementary oxygen (Reese 2004)).

Biot was also a member of the [[Legion of Honour]]; he was elected chevalier in 1814 and commander in 1849. In 1815, he was elected a Foreign Member of the [[Royal Society]] of London,<ref>{{cite web|url= https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Persons&dsqSearch=Code==%27NA3671%27&dsqCmd=Show.tcl|title= Fellow details|publisher= [[Royal Society]]|access-date= 19 May 2016|archive-date= 5 November 2018|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181105235858/https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Persons&dsqSearch=Code==%27NA3671%27&dsqCmd=Show.tcl|url-status= dead}}</ref> in 1816 a member of the [[Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]], and 1822 a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=[[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]|access-date=8 September 2016}}</ref> In addition, Biot received the [[Rumford Medal]] in 1840, awarded by the Royal Society in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter. (O’Connor and Robertson 1997). In 1850 Jean-Baptiste Biot published in the ''[[Journal des savants]]'' a 7-page memoir from his recollections of the period of the late 1790s and early 1800s concerning his encounters with [[Laplace]].<ref>{{cite journal|title=Review of ''Anecdote relative à M. de Laplace'' par Jean Baptiste Biot|journal=The Quarterly Review|volume=87|date=June 1850|pages=115–118|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092628734;view=1up;seq=129}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Biot, J. B.|title=''Anecdote relative à M. de Laplace''|journal=Journal des savants|year=1816 |postscript=. Février 1850|pages=65–71|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433109997845;view=1up;seq=81}}</ref>

Jean-Baptiste Biot had a single son, [[Édouard Biot|Édouard Constant Biot]], an engineer and Sinologist, born in 1803. Edouard died in 1850 and his father made extraordinary efforts to ready for publication the second half of Edouard's last book, a reference translation of the Chinese classic [[Rites of Zhou|''Tcheou-li'']]. It had been left in manuscript, unfinished. To publish it in correct form, Jean-Baptiste Biot wrote, he had to  consult [[Stanislas Julien]], the famous Sinologist, but also, especially for the translation of the most difficult part, the [[Kaogongji]], he himself visited many workshops and questioned artisans and craftsmen about their methods and vocabulary in order to verify his son's work. Biot's translation remains to this day the only translation into a Western language of this book.

He died in [[Paris]] on 3 February 1862.