Auguste Arthur de la Rive

Auguste Arthur de la Rive ( born October 9, 1801 in Geneva, † November 27, 1873 in Marseilles ) was a Swiss physicist.

His father was Charles- Gaspard de la Rive.

De la Rive in 1823 professor at the Academy in Geneva. His experimental studies related to electricity and magnetism. To gild With his invention, silver and copper in electroplating baths, he laid the foundation for further development of electroforming. In 1841 he received a prize of 3,000 francs for his invention of the French Academy of Sciences. He also supplied research to problems of thermodynamics and wave optics. With François Marcet he examined the specific heat capacity of gases and made observations to determine the temperature of the earth's crust. He made studies of the theory of the voltaic cell and the electric discharge in rarefied gases, which led him to a theory of the Aurora Borealis.

On August 18, 1826, he married the writer Jeanne- Mathilde Duppa ( born March 14, 1808 † August 18, 1850 ). 1834 her son Lucien de la Rive was born in Choulex.

De La Rive edited 1836-1841 the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève, 1841 to 1845, the Archives de l' Electricité, from 1846 to 1850 the Archives des sciences physiques et naturelles. He also wrote Traité d' Electricité et théorique appliquées ( 3 vols Paris, 1854-1858 ).

When the French in 1860 annexed Savoy and Nice, also feared the Geneva French aggression. He received from the British Government a declaration to the French, that an attack on a casus belli was Geneva.

In 1859 he was elected foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In 1862 he founded in Geneva in collaboration with Marc Thury the Société pour la construction d' instruments de physique (SIP ) for the manufacture of scientific instruments. The University of Oxford wanted to give him an honorary doctorate in 1873. On the way there he died suddenly at Marseille.