Michel Gloesener
A native of the former Duchy of Luxembourg, Michel Gloesener (1794-1876) was a physicist and builder of scientific instruments, such as telegraphs, clocks, chronographs, lightning conductors... Appointed rector for the 1846-1847 academic year, he succeeded Pierre-Joseph Destrivaux, rector for the second time in 1845-46.
Like many others who came from the same border regions, he was educated in both Metz and Trier. Gloesener enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Science in Liège in 1818 and quickly specialized in the field of electromagnetism. Five years later, he defended his doctoral thesis, which was based on the research of André-M. Ampère.
After a stay in Paris, where he met Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac among others, Gloesener was appointed professor at the Collège philosophique de Louvain (1825), while at the same time engaging in private charity work. After the dissolution of the Faculty of Sciences in Louvain (1830), he was given a series of lectures at the University of Liège - astronomy, theoretical and experimental physics, celestial mechanics... - before being admitted to the ordinariate in 1836.
Co-founder of the Société royale des Sciences de Liège, he became its president in 1842, and the following year wrote a major article on electromagnetic devices for the first issue of the Société's Mémoires. At the end of his term as rector (1846-1847), he dedicated his speech to the influence of the study of physics on the well-being of mankind. He was made emeritus in 1860, but continued to give part of his lectures until his death in 1876. Among the many devices he invented were needle and keyboard telegraphs, clocks, chronographs and a lightning rod, which he marketed at the end of his life through the Manufacture belge d'Appareils électriques set up in his home.
Le but le plus élevé des sciences, c’est d’éclairer, de développer l’esprit humain et de le conduire à la connaissance de la vérité […] Et de quoi pourrions-nous désespérer, quand nous songeons […] au télégraphe électrique, qui nous permet de communiquer nos pensées à des distances immenses avec la rapidité de l’éclair […]
L’étude des merveilles de la nature émeut notre cœur, y développe des sentiments généreux, nous fait chercher l’honneur et la félicité, non dans l’opulence mais dans la volonté de concourir au bien-être de tous et de mériter par nos actions l’estime et l’amitié des gens de bien.
Go to : Barthélemy-Valentin de Lavacherie
Illustration: Charles Soubre, Michel Gloesener, lithograph, 1856, Musée WittertCollections artistiques VLiège, inv. 39670.
