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Biot, Jean Baptiste 1774-1862
French physicist and astronomer

Born in Paris, he became Professor of Physics at the Collčge de France. He made a balloon ascent with Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac to study magnetism at high altitudes in 1804. He travelled to Spain with François Arago in 1806 to determine the length of a degree of longitude. He invented a polariscope and established the fundamental laws of the rotation of the plane of polarization of light by optically active substances. His son, Édouard Constant (1803-50), was a Chinese scholar.