Charles-Gaspard de la Rive (14 March 177018 March 1834) was a
Swiss physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
who specialized in the treatment of
mental illness, and later worked as a
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
.
Early life
De la Rive was born in
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
, and originally studied law. During the
Geneva revolution of 1794, he was a freedom fighter and later fled to Scotland with the physician
Alexander Marcet
Alexander John Gaspard Marcet FRS (1 August 1770 – 19 October 1822), was a Genevan-born physician who became a British citizen in 1800. His wife Jane Marcet was a prolific author, whose series of books entitled 'Conversations' treated topic ...
. In 1797, he attained a doctorate of medicine from the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
while working with his teacher
John Allen on the work ''Tentamen physiologicum inaugurale, de calore animali ...''. According to De la Rive, Allen believed that the body heat of animals is based on the combustion of food particles in the blood. After practising for a few years in London, where he visited several
asylums, he returned to Geneva.
Physician
After his return, he became professor of
pharmaceutical chemistry
Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with designing and developing pharmaceutical drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis and developme ...
at the
Geneva Academy in 1802 and of general
chemistry in 1819, becoming
rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
in 1823.
He was a physician in the hospice of the mentally ill as early as 1811, and he fought for the construction of an asylum adapted to advances in the science of mental illness, which was completed in 1838.
He also worked at the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, writing on
electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...
and chemistry.
Physicist
In the summer of 1814 he was visited by
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for t ...
and
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
, and later
André-Marie Ampère. In 1821 he sent Faraday a small apparatus with a floating wire loop that sensitively reacted to the approach of a
magnet
A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, steel, nicke ...
, which played an important role in Faraday's research. He also had the idea of a
galvanometer
A galvanometer is an electromechanical measuring instrument for electric current. Early galvanometers were uncalibrated, but improved versions, called ammeters, were calibrated and could measure the flow of current more precisely.
A galvan ...
based on the
electrolytic decomposition of water, which was used by Ampère for determining the state of his
voltaic pile
upright=1.2, Schematic diagram of a copper–zinc voltaic pile. The copper and zinc discs were separated by cardboard or felt spacers soaked in salt water (the electrolyte). Volta's original piles contained an additional zinc disk at the bottom, ...
s. He wrote articles on electricity and chemistry for the magazine ''
Bibliothèque Britannique''. He also supported Humphry Davy's views on electrochemistry,
John Dalton's atomic theory and
Jöns Jacob Berzelius's idea of
definite proportions.
In addition, De la Rive was politically active. He was a member of the Provisional Council (1813) and a Councillor of State (1814–1818), becoming the ''premier
syndic'' of Geneva (1817–1818). He was also a member of the ''Conseil représentatif'' (1814–1832).
In 1801, he married Marguerite Adélaïde Boissier. Their son was
Auguste Arthur de la Rive
Prof Auguste Arthur de la Rive ForMemRS, HFRSE (9 October 180127 November 1873) was a Swiss physicist. He was President of the Helvetic Society of Natural Science in 1845.
De la Rive's first scientific publication was on the influence of the Ear ...
, a noted Swiss physicist.
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:La Rive, Charles-Gaspard De
1770 births
1834 deaths
Physicians from the Republic of Geneva
Physicists from the Republic of Geneva
Swiss psychiatrists
19th-century Swiss physicians