Two volumes with mounted and inserted material, comprising some 313 Autograph Letters Signed and 20 Letters Signed by colleagues and friends writing to Boutigny, totalling 507 pages, various sizes, 1819-1881. Also, 27 printed formal invitations or notices with Boutigny's name and other information filled in, 17 Autograph Notes on printed calling cards, and 28 additional printed calling cards unmarked in any way. The volumes into which the material is mounted measure 14x9, cloth, string ties.
A phenomenal collection of letters of the important French chemist and pharmacologist Pierre H. Boutigny, which provides an in-depth view of the exchange of scientific ideas in mid-nineteenth century Europe, and follows the successful career of one of France's leading scientists. Of the dozens of correspondents, the following persons are of particular note: the physicists Jacques Babinet, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, Antoine Cesar Bercquerel, Cesar Mansuete Despretx, Michael Faraday, Sir William R. Grove, Jean Charles Athanase Peltier, and Henri Victor Regnault; the chemists Jons Jakob Berzelius, Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, Michel Eugene Chevreul, Jean Baptists Andre Dumas, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, William Allen Miller, Edmond Moride, Matthieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila, Theophile Jules Pelouze, and Peirre Jean Robiquet; the engineers and inventors Sire Henry Bessemer, Eugene Flachat, Henry Joseph Paixhans, and George Rennie; the physicians and surgeons Andre Marie Sonstant Dumeril, Pierre Jean Marie Flourns, Jule Rene Guerin and Dominique Jean Larray; the astronomers Herve Auguste Etienne Fay and Caroline Lucretia Herschel; the zoologists Isodore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire and Achille Valenciennes; the geologists David Thomas Ansted and Sir Roderick Impey Murchison; the geographer and naturalist Jean Baptists George Bory de Saint Vincent; the pharmacologist Pierre Francois Guillaume Boullay; the metallurgist John Percy; the archaeologist the Duc de Luynes; and the economist Michel Chevalier. Among Boutigny's acquaintances in government are the statesmen Eugene Rouher and the Duc de Bassano. The letters are in several categories, scientific, "career-advancing," social, etc. Perhaps the most significant are the former, pertaining to theoretical and applied chemistry, physics, biology, etc. Several writers take an interest in Boutigny's experiments in calefaction, the phenomenon which earned Boutigny his reputation. He discovered that when drops of a liquid come into contact with a hot metal surface, they become lens-shaped, turn rapidly in a spiral, and slowly evaporate. The process of evaporation creates a vapor which lifts the drops from the metal and prevents them from coming into further contact with it. The letters abound in detailed technical descriptions, but they do not lack the occasional anecdote or humorous exchange. The correspondence as a whole reveals the effervescence of a scientific world constantly engaged in experiment and discovery. (More complete description available on request).