R. A. Heller Wilfrid Laurier Universitv Waterloo. Ontario, Canada
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"Let Them Eat Soup"-Count and Napoleon Bonaparte
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Sir Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), more commonly known as Count Rumford, is famous among modem scientists primarily for such heat-generating activities as his cannonboring experiments and his stormy marriage to the widow of Antoine Lavoisier. I t is less generally appreciated that during his lifetime the Count was widely recognized as a diplomat, military administrator, inventor, culinary expert, philanthropist and social philasopher, although a t the same time he had a well-deserved reputation for being an arrogant, selfserving individual of abrasive character. In light of Rumford's wide-ranging activities, i t is perhaps nut toosurprising to tind his name appearing twice in a small collecti(m of Kapoleun Bonaparte's correspondence.1 Thus we learn, in a letter written to the Count himself on September 29,1803, that the soon-to-be Emperor was so gracious as to approve of Rumford's theory of heat transfer, (expressed in terms of "caloric molecules"), with the imperial statement, "Such were the ideas that I had formed for myself and that your memoir has confirmed." Apparently Napoleon would admit to no one's superiority in any field of endeavor. The second Rumf
