Jean-Baptiste Biot

Arago and he worked together early in their careers, Arago coming to feel that Biot had sabotaged his results (he then revenged himself by working with Biot’s protégé Fresnel on the polarisation of light). Assisting Laplace in preparing his findings for publication, Biot observed that Laplace used the stock phrase “it is easy to see” when he’d forgotten his original reasoning. Biot and Gay-Lussac were the first to ascend in a balloon for scientific purposes. He did pioneering electro-magnetic work with Savart, and asked the young Pasteur to come and demonstrate his findings about the handedness of some molecules.