Auguste Arthur De la Rive

Auguste Arthur De la Rive (1801 to 1873) was a Swiss physicist, born in Geneva, the son of Charles-Gaspard de la Rive, a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the academy of Geneva. His first publication, in 1822, dealt with the influence of the Earth's magnetism on a movable frame carrying a voltaic current, and at twenty-two he was appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the same academy. With Francois Marcet he investigated the specific heat of gases and the temperature of the Earth's crust, but most of his attention went to electricity, especially the theory of the voltaic cell and electric discharge in rarefied gases, which led him to a new theory of the aurora borealis. In 1840 he described a process for electro-gilding silver and brass, for which the French Academy of Sciences gave him a prize of 3000 francs. His principal work was a Treatise on Electricity in Theory and Practice, issued in three volumes in French and English from 1854 to 1858, and he was President of the Helvetic Society of Natural Science in 1845.