Auguste-Arthur de la Rive was his son. Ampère, Davy and Faraday all stayed with the de la Rives in Geneva, where Pictet was a colleague jointly responsible for a significant scientific journal of the time, Bibliothèque Britannique. Berzelius was one of his correspondents; de la Rive supported his views, as well as Davy’s and Dalton’s. Dumont, when he wasn’t in London, was a fellow-mainstay of Geneva intellectual life.