To these names is
very properly added that of Sadi Carnot. A note found among his papers
unquestionably proves that, before 1830, ideas had occurred to him
from which it resulted that in producing work an equivalent amount of
heat was destroyed. But the year 1842 is particularly memorable in the
history of science as the year in which Jules Robert Mayer succeeded,
by an entirely personal effort, in really enunciating the principle of
the conservation of energy. Chemists recall with just pride that the
_Remarques sur les forces de la nature animee_, contemptuously
rejected by all the journals of physics, were received and published
in the _Annalen_ of Liebig. We ought never to forget this example,
which shows with what difficulty a new idea contrary to the classic
theories of the period succeeds in coming to the front; but
extenuating circumstances may be urged on behalf of the physicists.
Robert Mayer had a rather insufficient mathematical education, and his
Memoirs, the _Remarques_, as well as the ulterior publications,
_Memoire sur le mouvement organique et la nutrition_ and the
_Materiaux pour la dynamique du ciel_, contain, side by side with very
profound ideas, evident errors in mechanics.
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