I. Andre Marie, a French physicist and mathematician, born in Lyons, Jan. 20, 1775, died in Marseilles, June 10, 1830. As a boy he showed a singular passion for mathematics, in which at 10 years of age he had made remarkable progress, but could not be persuaded to apply himself with zeal to other studies. He finally consented to study Virgil, that he might be able to master the works of Euler and Bernoulli, which were then accessible only in Latin. At the age of 18 he had gone through the whole range of scientific studies, and had read the great encyclopaedia of Diderot and D'Alembert so thoroughly, that 40 years afterward he could still repeat whole pages of it. The death of his father by the guillotine during the revolution affected him so that for upward of a year his friends feared that his intellect had been permanently impaired. In 1802 he was appointed professor of mathematics at Lyons, a post which he owed to his first publication, "Considerations upon the Mathematical Theory of Games of Chance." In 1805 he became a teacher in the polytechnic school at Paris, in 1808 inspector general of the university, in 1809 professor of mathematical analysis in the polytechnic school, and in 1814 a member of the institute.

In 1820 he began to devote much attention to the phenomena of electro-magnetism, and in 1824-'6 published Recueil des observations elec-tro-dynamiques (2 vols.), a work characterized by profound thought and extraordinary philosophical sagacity. His publications are numerous, many of them being contributions to the Journal de l'ecole polytechnique and the Memoires de l'institut. Ampere was a man of genial humor and great simplicity of character, and singularly ignorant of the world, from which he lived retired. He was engaged on his last great work, "The Classification of the Sciences," at the time of his death.

II. Jean Jacques Antoine, son of the preceding, born in Lyons, Aug. 12, 1800, died March 27, 1864. His education was completed under the supervision of his father at Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship of Mme. Recamier and Chateaubriand, He pursued a course of philosophy with Cousin, and early conceived a passion for English and German literature, romance, and belles-lettres. After some years devoted to travel and literary pursuits, he was in 1833 appointed professor of the history of French literature in the college of France. His work on the early and mediaeval literature of France (4 vols.) was a resume of his lessons. In 1842 he was elected a member of the academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres, and five years afterward of the French academy. He visited many parts of Europe and the East, studied successfully the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and contributed to the Revue des Deux-Mondes a well written series of articles on a journey in Egypt and Nubia in 1844. He also made an extended tour in the United States, paying much attention to aboriginal remains and antiquities, and observing carefully the habits of the people.

The result of his travels was published in the Revue des Deux-Mondes. His works entitled Be la Chine et des travaux de Remusat, and La Grece, Rome et Dante, evince his knowledge of languages and general literature; and he published in 1841 a valuable essay on the formation of the French language. Among his other works is L'Histoire romaine a Rome (4 vols. 8vo, 1856-'64), a novel application of archaeology to literature and politics. His Correspondance, constituting an autobiography, was published in Paris in 1872.