Eugene Lafont
Encyclopedia
Eugene Lafont was a Belgian Jesuit, Missionary
in Bengal
, scientist and founder of the first Scientific Society in India.
in Ghent
(1854). He then went through the usual Jesuit formation, with period of pedagogical experiences as teacher
in Ghent
(1857–59) and Liège
(1862–63) and years of philosophical formation (Tournai
) and a degree in natural sciences in Namur
(1863–65). In Namur he showed already a particular aptitude for physical experiment
ation. In 1865 Lafont left for India where he arrived, in Calcutta the 4 December 1865.
, was hardly 5 years old and everything had to be done. However he could not think of teaching science without practical experiments; he promptly installed a laboratory in the college, probably the first such science laboratory of modern India. Within two years he made headlines in the local press: in November 1867, thanks to a makeshift observatory set on the roof of the college he recorded daily meteorological observations which allowed him to anticipate with much accuracy the arrival of a devastating cyclone. The government authorities were informed and took immediate measures that prevented the loss of many human lives. From that day meteorological forecasts of Lafont were regularly published in the widely read weekly paper of Calcutta: the Indo-European Correspondence.
, the telephone
, phonograph
, the X-rays, photography
, etc. Through contacts the science enthusiast had brought from Europe the most modern scientific tools, such as the meteograph of Angelo Secchi
(Meteorology
remained his favourite field of activity). The lectures had a huge success and came to an end only with the departure of Lafont for Darjeeling, a few months before his death of Lafont, in 1908.
A the time Lafont was rector of St. Xavier’s College (1874) a high level international scientific expedition visited Calcutta on its way to Midnapore
(a town south-west of Calcutta) in order to observe a very rare astronomical phenomenon: the passage of planet Venus
before the Sun
. Lafont joined the group. His perspicacious observations made him known internationally and he obtained without difficulty the financial help needed in order to build on the college’s premises an astronomical observatory equipped with the most modern telescope
(1875).
Mahendra Lal Sircar, whose friend he was since 1869, Lafont founded in 1876 the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
. The first aim of the association was to disseminate scientific knowledge and keep the general public abreast with the latest scientific progresses. From its early days the Thursday evening lectures of Eugene Lafont were one of the Association’s main activities. Later it developed into a center of research which supported, among others, the spectrographic investigations of C.V. Raman (1930 Nobel Prize in Physics
) and of K.S. Krishnan.
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) was another student, and later friend, of Lafont. When Bose discovered the ‘wireless telegraphy’ (at the source of radiophonic inventions) it is Lafont who made in Calcutta (1897) a public demonstration of this discovery. For Lafont there was no doubt that Bose had preceded the Italian Guglielmo Marconi
in this discovery. He never failed to give due credit to his former student.
In fact Lafont was more of a genial pedagogue than a research scholar or inventor. His competence and multifarious activities gave him a place in the University of Calcutta
of which he was a Senate member for many years. Thanks to him the importance of the study of science in the University was acknowledged: he prepared the science syllabus and in 1903 obtained from the ‘Indian Universities Commission’ more substantial means for the setting up of laboratories and the improvement of the science courses. In 1908, a few months before his death, he received a Doctorate
in Sciences Honoris Causa from the University of Calcutta.
' of his times and what he said when radium
was discovered may well be premonitory: These discoveries must make us cautious. We shouldn’t easily believe that we are in possession of a final certainty in what concerns Matter and the forces of nature in general. It is noble and wonderful to say: ‘I do not know’.
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, scientist and founder of the first Scientific Society in India.
Formation and early years
After secondary studies in the Jesuit High School of Mons, Lafont entered the novitiate of the Society of JesusSociety of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
in Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
(1854). He then went through the usual Jesuit formation, with period of pedagogical experiences as teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
in Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
(1857–59) and Liège
Liège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....
(1862–63) and years of philosophical formation (Tournai
Tournai
Tournai is a Walloon city and municipality of Belgium located 85 kilometres southwest of Brussels, on the river Scheldt, in the province of Hainaut....
) and a degree in natural sciences in Namur
Namur (city)
Namur is a city and municipality in Wallonia, in southern Belgium. It is both the capital of the province of Namur and of Wallonia....
(1863–65). In Namur he showed already a particular aptitude for physical experiment
Experiment
An experiment is a methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results...
ation. In 1865 Lafont left for India where he arrived, in Calcutta the 4 December 1865.
Meteorology at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta
Soon after arriving in the capital city of British India Lafont was appointed to teach science. St. Xavier's College, CalcuttaSt. Xavier's College, Calcutta
St. Xavier's College is located in Kolkata, India, and is named after St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit saint of the 16th century, who travelled to India. It is an autonomous college affiliated to the University of Calcutta. It gained autonomy in July 2006, thus becoming the first autonomous college of...
, was hardly 5 years old and everything had to be done. However he could not think of teaching science without practical experiments; he promptly installed a laboratory in the college, probably the first such science laboratory of modern India. Within two years he made headlines in the local press: in November 1867, thanks to a makeshift observatory set on the roof of the college he recorded daily meteorological observations which allowed him to anticipate with much accuracy the arrival of a devastating cyclone. The government authorities were informed and took immediate measures that prevented the loss of many human lives. From that day meteorological forecasts of Lafont were regularly published in the widely read weekly paper of Calcutta: the Indo-European Correspondence.
Scientific Lectures
As soon as he was at ease in English (1870) Lafont began to give scientific lectures for the general public: he had a particular gift in popularizing scientific knowledge. All the new scientific discoveries and inventions of the second half of the 19th century were thus made known, always with empirical evidence. So was it of the magic lanternMagic lantern
The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...
, the telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
, phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
, the X-rays, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, etc. Through contacts the science enthusiast had brought from Europe the most modern scientific tools, such as the meteograph of Angelo Secchi
Angelo Secchi
-External links:...
(Meteorology
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
remained his favourite field of activity). The lectures had a huge success and came to an end only with the departure of Lafont for Darjeeling, a few months before his death of Lafont, in 1908.
A the time Lafont was rector of St. Xavier’s College (1874) a high level international scientific expedition visited Calcutta on its way to Midnapore
Midnapore
Midnapore is the district headquarters of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. It is situated on the banks of the Kangsabati River . This area had taken a pioneering role in India's freedom struggle...
(a town south-west of Calcutta) in order to observe a very rare astronomical phenomenon: the passage of planet Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
before the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
. Lafont joined the group. His perspicacious observations made him known internationally and he obtained without difficulty the financial help needed in order to build on the college’s premises an astronomical observatory equipped with the most modern telescope
Telescope
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
(1875).
The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
With the financial support of philanthropistPhilanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
Mahendra Lal Sircar, whose friend he was since 1869, Lafont founded in 1876 the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, established in July 1876 at 210 Bowbazar street, Calcutta, is a national institution for higher learning whose primary purpose is to foster high quality fundamental research in frontier disciplines of the basic sciences. Founded by Dr. Mahendra...
. The first aim of the association was to disseminate scientific knowledge and keep the general public abreast with the latest scientific progresses. From its early days the Thursday evening lectures of Eugene Lafont were one of the Association’s main activities. Later it developed into a center of research which supported, among others, the spectrographic investigations of C.V. Raman (1930 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
) and of K.S. Krishnan.
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) was another student, and later friend, of Lafont. When Bose discovered the ‘wireless telegraphy’ (at the source of radiophonic inventions) it is Lafont who made in Calcutta (1897) a public demonstration of this discovery. For Lafont there was no doubt that Bose had preceded the Italian Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...
in this discovery. He never failed to give due credit to his former student.
In fact Lafont was more of a genial pedagogue than a research scholar or inventor. His competence and multifarious activities gave him a place in the University of Calcutta
University of Calcutta
The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...
of which he was a Senate member for many years. Thanks to him the importance of the study of science in the University was acknowledged: he prepared the science syllabus and in 1903 obtained from the ‘Indian Universities Commission’ more substantial means for the setting up of laboratories and the improvement of the science courses. In 1908, a few months before his death, he received a Doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in Sciences Honoris Causa from the University of Calcutta.
Evaluation
Lafont was an extraordinary science enthusiast. He was also a man of faith. As the Catholic Church at that time had a very negative image in the world of science, Lafont had to give an account of himself before scientists who expressed surprise. Though Catholic and priest, I may well tell you that I receive with profound joy, and even love, every progress made in science. He was not blind to the dangers of the widespread ‘scientismScientism
Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the systematic methods and approach of science, especially the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints...
' of his times and what he said when radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
was discovered may well be premonitory: These discoveries must make us cautious. We shouldn’t easily believe that we are in possession of a final certainty in what concerns Matter and the forces of nature in general. It is noble and wonderful to say: ‘I do not know’.