[A physicist amongst the biologists: Arsène d'Arsonval (1851-1940)].

Abstract

This short review relates the key events in the life of Arsène d'Arsonval (1851-1940) who, after training as a physician, started his professional cursus as Claude Bernard's assistant at the Collège de France, to sucessfully reach in 1894 the head position of the Department of Experimental Medicine, after Brown-Sequard, who succeeded the Master Bernard. With this chair position, Arsène d'Arsonval had the opportunity to lead the Biological Physics laboratory built for him in the Collège's annex at Nogent-sur-Marne, a key function that he proceeded with until his retirement in 1930. Elected to the Académie de Médecine and then to the Académie des Sciences, and promoted to the prestigious Grand-Croix de la Légion d'Honneur, d'Arsonval presided over the Société de Biologie from 1928 to 1933, despite having a scientific profile more related to physics than biology. His work was as multifaceted as it was abundant (800 publications), and ranged from opotherapy, which laid the foundations of endocrinology, to air liquefaction. But his major contributions concerned electricity, its applications to telephony, and above all its relationship with the living organism. He notably contributed to important studies on bio-electrogenesis, but even more so on the biological and therapeutic effects of sinusoidal currents (d'Arsonvalisation). Recognized as an "official scientist" of the 3rd Republic, d'Arsonval died at the start of his third French-German war in his native Limousin village, where his memory is faithfully perpetuated.