Marat, Jean Paul 1743-93
French revolutionary, physician and journalist

Born in Boudry near Neuch�tel, Switzerland, he studied medicine and practised in London in the 1770s and in Paris from 1777. He was brevet-physician to the guards of the Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X) until 1786, and during that time worked in optics and electricity, and produced several scientific works. He became a member of the Cordeliers' Club, and in 1789 he established the radical paper, L'Ami du Peuple, inciting the 'sans-culottes' to violence. The hatred he inspired forced him into hiding several times, once in the sewers of Paris. His consequent loathing of constituted authority influenced the September Massacres. In 1792 he was elected to the Convention, and with Robespierre and Danton he overthrew the Girondins. A skin disease contracted in the sewers meant he could only write sitting in his bath, and on the evening of 13 July he was assassinated there by Charlotte Corday, a member of the Girondins.