Jean-Baptiste Biot

Jean-Baptiste Biot was born on 21 April 1774 in France, entering a century that would break open questions of light, magnetism, and the cosmos. With Félix Savart he co-discovered the Biot–Savart law, anchoring the young field of magnetostatics. He made an early balloon ascent to study the atmosphere from above, and turned his attention to polarized light, tracing how it bent and twisted through materials. His insistence that meteorites were real — extraterrestrial stone, not terrestrial delusion — eventually moved the scientific establishment. He died on 3 February 1862, his name carried forwa…