Pierre Polinière

Pierre Polinière (1671 to 1734) was an early investigator of electricity and electrical phenomena, notably barometric light, a form of gas-discharge light that suggested the possibility of electric lighting. He also helped introduce the scientific method into French universities. Born in Coulonces in Normandy, the only child of Jean-Baptiste Poulynière and Françoise Vasnier, he lost his father at three, and his mother saw to his education. After a classical education at the University of Caen Normandy, two paternal uncles who were Catholic clergymen arranged for him to study philosophy at Harcourt College of the University of Paris, where he also studied mathematics under the calculus advocate Pierre Varignon. In the 1690s he took a degree in medicine and became interested in science. His original research included studies of light produced by electrical discharge through low-pressure air, with discoveries simultaneous with but independent of those of Francis Hauksbee, and his finding that static electricity could make light in low-pressure gases led him to speculate that lightning is a form of static discharge. He gave popular public lectures with experimental demonstrations of his own devising, around 1700 before students at the colleges of the University of Paris.