Collections of scientific theses from the Faculty of Sciences of Paris

Louis Pasteur, Recherches sur la capacité de saturation de l'acide arsénieux. Etude des arsénites de potasse, de soude et d'ammoniaque. Suivi de Etude des phénomènes relatifs à la polarisation rotatoire des liquides. Application de la polarisation rotatoire des liquides à la solution de diverses questions de chimie, 1847 (Fonds des thèses de la faculté des sciences de paris)

The BSU inherited the collections of scientific theses from the Faculty of Sciences in Paris, which were previously held at the Sorbonne.

A selection of these old theses in different disciplines (mathematics, astronomy, physics, mechanics, chemistry, life and earth sciences) was made by a scientific committee.

The oldest thesis presented on SorbonNum dates from 1811. This collection includes some of the great names in the history of science (including D'Orbigny, Becquerel, Pasteur, Poincaré, Quatrefages and many others...) and the subjects chosen allow us to follow the evolution of scientific questioning in the 19th century.

The content of these documents varies over time. Sometimes only a few pages long before 1840, theses then contained only the positions or 'programmes' of the oral argument, on two subjects (main thesis and supplementary thesis), the emphasis being on the defence and the quality of the oral argument. From 1840 onwards, the whole thesis is printed, and can be several hundred pages long.

This digital collection respects the original presentation, combining in the same document the main thesis and the complementary one if they were published behind the same title page, or separating them into two discret documents if the originals each had a title page.

Access to the collection