JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The other day I retrieved the year 1842 from the mass of the great Comptes Rendus down in the studio, and among the unexpected papers was a truly unexpected one, and it belonged to the physicist Claude-Servais-Mathias-Marie-Roland Pouillet. Pouillet--mostly know as Claude or Mathias--is best remembered today for Pouillet's Law and his association with Ohm's Law, though unfortunately this paper was five years past the first appearance of his law (and 15 years past Ohm's). What was unexpected here was that this was a long contribution by the physicist Pouillet on the laws of population--now Pouillet had a long and varied career, and published a number of papers in a wide array of physics topics, so the population dynamics paper seemed fairly well outside his scope. It is also--for the Comptes Rendus--quite long at 16 pages.
This is outside of my own area, and although I can't see any reference to the work of Malthus (1798) or related, I'm afraid the whole thing leaves me behind. And so I include a link to the full paper found at the Biodiversity Library (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/20656#page/875/mode/1up)
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