Thomson, Benjamin

His wife, Marie-Anne, studied drawing with the great painter Jacques-Louis David in order to transcribe her husband s laboratory notes and illustrate them. David s ravishing portrait of the Lavoisiers hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The son of Marie-Anne s longtime lover founded the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Corporation in Delaware. Marie-Anne later married the American physicist, Benjamin Thomson. Later ennobled as the Count of Rumford, Thomson demonstrated the mechanical nature of heat. Marie-Anne had an excellent eye for scientific talent. 

In 1798, Benjamin Thomson, also known as Count Rumford measured the heat produced when cannon were bored underwater and concluded that caloric was not a conserved substance because heat could continue to be generated indefinitely by this process. 

Walter Benjamin edited by David S. Ferris William Blake edited by Morris Eaves Brecht edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (second edition)... 

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