Edme Mabiotte, a French physicist, died May 12,1684. The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was prior of St. Martin-sur-Beaune, Dijon, and one of the original members of the French academy of sciences. Condorcet savs that "Mariotte was the first one in France who introduced into physics a spirit of observation and doubt, and who inspired that scrupulousness and caution so necessary to those who interrogate nature and interpret her responses." His collected works were published at Leydcn in 1717, and at the Hague in 1740, in 2 vols. 4to. They contain papers upon a great variety of subjects in physics and natural philosophy, and are filled with accounts of his numerous and ingenious experiments. His principal discoveries were: 1, the law in regard to gases, usually called Mari-otte's law, that, the temperature of a gas remaining fixed, its volume varies inversely as the pressure upon it (see Pneumatics); 2, that air exists in liquids, especially in water; 3, that the part of the retina where the optic nerve enters it is insensible to light.

He also invented the now common experiment of dropping a coin and a feather in the exhausted receiver of an air pump, to show that both will fall through equal distances in equal times.