France French National Academy

Gilbert Stork (b. 1923 in Brussels, Belgium) is Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Columbia University in New York. Following his secondary education in France, he got his B.S. degree from the University of Florida in 1942 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1945. He spent some six years at Harvard University and has been at Columbia University since 1953. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. and a Foreign Member of the French Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Society (London). 

G.F. Froment is a Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technion, Haifa, Israel (1985), of the University of Nancy, France (2001) and an Honorary Professor of the Universidad Nacional de Salta (Argentina). He is a member of the Belgian Academy of Science (1984), the Belgian Academy of Overseas Science (1977), a Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Engineering (1999) and a member of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Science and Engineering (2003). He was a member of the Scientific Council of the French Petroleum Institute (1989-1997), of the Technological Council of Rhone-Poulenc (1988-1997) and has intensively consulted for the world s major petroleum and (petro) chemical companies. 

No such uniformity of weights and measures existed on the European continent. Weights and measures differed not only from country to country but even from town to town and from one trade to another. This lack of uniformity led the National Assembly of France during the French Revolution to enact a decree (May 8, 1790) that called upon the French Academy of Sciences to act in concert with the Royal Society of London to deduce an invariable standard for all of the measures and all weights. Having already an adequate system of weights and measures, the English... 

Payen, a member of many scientific societies, was elected a member of the Central Agricultural Society of France in 1833 and was its secretary for 26 years. He was also a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medicine, the Society of the Advancement of National Industry, the Seine Horticultural Society, and the Council of Hygiene and Public Health. 

The first measurements were probably based on the human body (the length of the foot, for example). In time, fixed standards developed, but these varied from place to place. Each country or government (and often each trade) adopted its own units. As science became more quantitative in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scientists found that the lack of standard units was a problem. They began to seek a simple, international system of measurement. In 1791 a study committee of the French Academy of Sciences devised such a system. Called the metric system, it became the official system of measurement for France and was soon used by scientists throughout the world. Most nations have since adopted the metric system or, at least, have set a schedule for changing to it. 

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