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Jean Baptiste Biot[zhAN bAtEst´ byO] Pronunciation Key, 1774–1862, French physicist, grad. Ecole Polytechnique (1797). He taught mathematics at Beauvais before becoming (1800) professor of mathematical physics at the CollEge de France and later (1809–49) of astronomy at the Sorbonne. With French physicist FranCois Arago, Biot measured properties of gases, and with French physicist Felix Savart, he formulated a law for the magnetic force near a wire carrying an electric current. He discovered that when light passes through some substances, including sugar solutions, the plane of polarization of the light is rotated by an amount that depends on the color of the light.
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