French naturalist and physicist.

Succeeded the abbé Nollet as chair of physics at the Collège de Navarre. Member of the Académie royale des sciences. His Histoire de l’électricité traduite de l’anglois de Joseph Priestley … (3 vols., Paris, 1771) revived the old feud between Franklin and Nollet, by arguing that Nollet had first equated lightning with electricity.

Author of numerous scientific works including the six-volume Ornithologie (1760) and the Dictionnaire raisonné de physique (1781).

Born at Fontenay-le-Comte.