L'etonnant parcours du republicain J.H. Hassenfratz (1755-1827): Du faubourg Montmartre au Corps des Mines (review)

Devoting a whole book to the life of a second-rate historical figure may be futile and pointless. Yet this kind of biography can give us a new insight into a well-known period. Fortunately, this is the case with Emmanuel Grison’s biography of the French technologist J. H. Hassenfratz. Living in Paris during the second part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, Hassenfratz worked with prominent scientists of the French Academy of Sciences, such as Lavoisier and Monge. Following the footsteps of Arthur Birembaut, who wrote the article on Hassenfratz in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and planned a biography that he never published, Grison gives us a fascinating contextual biography based on thorough research in archives.

Hassenfratz was a self-educated “artist,” first a carpenter, then a military geographer, and finally a mining engineer. He attended Monge’s course of geometry at the Louvre in the early 1780s and soon became his protégé. Later, he worked in chemistry and met Lavoisier, who patronized his scientific activity. His curiosity was multifarious, and the range of his scientific interests very wide, from geography to economics to biochemistry, technology, and metallurgy. He played an important role in Lavoisier’s chemical revolution and with Adet elaborated in 1787 a new system of “chemical characters,” which was published in an appendix of the Méthode de la Nomenclature chimique.

Hassenfratz was one of the many young, ambitious talents who felt frustrated by the deadlock situation of the ancien régime and became enthusiastic about the French Revolution. He was a very active Jacobin, involved in the revolutionary events of 1792–93 (especially during the famous day of 31 May 1793, which led to the fall of the Girondins). At the same time, he participated in several revolutionary administrations, the Cadastre, the Bureau de consultation des arts et métiers, and the Ministry of War. He also contributed to the debate about public education by promoting technical training. In 1794, under the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, he organized with Monge the big Manufacture d’armes of Paris, the mining corps, and its E′cole des mines. He was also appointed professor of general physics at the ′Ecole polytechnique, which was founded at the end of the year. After 1795, Hassenfratz was accused of being a former terrorist and lost his influence. Yet he kept his chair at the E′cole polytechnique until 1815 and taught metallurgy at the E′cole des mines until 1822. He published his major work, the Sidérotechnie (Technology of iron) in 1812.

Hassenfratz’s life and work, as described by Grison, typify that of the technologist-scientist, whose role in science during the French Enlightenment has been too often underestimated. His research work, following the tradition of the arts et métiers, was based on descriptions and classifications, without any systematic theories. The striking point was his amateurism during his whole scientific career. That may explain his lack of recognition, even if he was protected by prominent academicians and appointed to several public positions. Grison also provides us firsthand information about several French technical institutions, including the Cadastre, the E′cole polytechnique, the mining corps, and the E′cole des mines. His study of mining engineering in France and its reorganization during the Revolution and empire is especially elaborate and illuminating. In contrast to the theoretical tradition in military engineering, the mine engineer embraced a strong practical tradition still alive in French engineering after the rise of the polytechnician system.

The book is elegantly written and based on very solid scholarship. It deserves to be read not only to discover Hassenfratz’s complex personality but also to discover some neglected aspects of French scientific and technological life during a period when a few prominent...