Editing Pierre Louis Dulong (section)

== Personality ==
[[File:Tour clovis h4.jpg|thumb|The modern-day [[Abbey of St Genevieve|Tour Clovis]] at the Abbey of St. Genevieve, the tower Dulong climbed to conduct his experiments on steam.]]
Socially, Dulong was often dismissed as a dry, standoffish individual. His few friends disagreed with this view, viewing his personality as subdued rather than dull.<ref name=":0" />According to a fellow physicist who compared Dulong and Petit:<ref name="2018-07-06_Piazza">{{cite arXiv |last=Piazza |first=Roberto |title=The strange case of Dr. Petit and Mr. Dulong |date=2018 |class=physics.hist-ph |eprint=1807.02270}}</ref>

{{Quote2|Petit had a lively intelligence, an elegant and easy speech, he seduced with an amiable look, got easily attached, and surrendered himself to his tendencies rather than governing them. He was credited with an instinctive scientific intuition, a power of premature invention, certain presages of an assured future that everyone foresaw and even desired, so great was the benevolence which he inspired. Dulong was the opposite: His language was thoughtful, his attitude serious and his appearance cold[. . . ] He worked slowly but with certainty, with a continuity and a power of will that nothing stopped, I should say with a courage that no danger could push back. In the absence of that vivacity of the mind which invents easily, but likes to rest, he had the sense of scientific exactness, the gusto for precision experiments, the talent of combining them, the patience of completing them, and the art, unknown before him, to carry them to the limits of accuracy[. . . ] Petit had more mathematical tendency, Dulong was more experimental; the first carried in the work more brilliant easiness, the second more continuity; One represented imagination, the other reason, which moderates and contains it.|[[Jules Jamin]] (1855)}}Dulong was noted both for his devotion to science and the stolid, almost casual, bravery he displayed in prosecuting his experiments. One such experiment involved the construction of a glass tubular apparatus atop the tower at the [[Abbey of Saint Genevieve]]. The tower was unsteady enough that an explosion of the experimental materials, considerably likely considering their volatility, could easily have toppled the tower and killed the researching physicists, including Dulong. The experiment though "full of danger and difficulty", was completed under Dulong's leadership.<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Dulong, Pierre Louis|volume=08}}</ref>

Another example of Dulong's indifference to danger amid scientific pursuit came about in his studies into [[nitrogen trichloride]]. Despite losing two fingers and one eye in his initial experiments, Dulong continued to research the unknown substance. His inquiry led to more injuries, after which he turned over the results of his studies to Humphry Davy.<ref name=":0" />