{{Short description|French biophysicist and philosopher (1883–1947)}}{{Infobox scientist | image = Du Nouy Pierre Lecomte.jpg | birth_date = {{Birth date|1883|12|20}} | birth_place = Paris, France | death_date = {{Death date and age|1947|9|22|1883|12|20}} | death_place = New York City, United States | fields = Biophysics | workplaces = Rockefeller Institute<br>Pasteur Institute | known_for = Du Noüy ring tensiometer<br>Du Noüy ring method<br>Telefinalist hypothesis | signature = Du Nouy signature.jpg }}
'''Pierre Lecomte du Noüy''' ({{IPA|fr|ləkɔ̃t dy nwi}};<ref>[http://www.forvo.com/word/lecomte_du_no%C3%BCy/ Forvo.com]</ref> 20 December 1883 – 22 September 1947) was a French biophysicist and philosopher. He is probably best remembered by scientists for his work on the surface tension, and other properties, of liquids.
== Biography == Du Noüy, a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille, was born in Paris, France, to a family of artists and intellectuals. His father, Émile André Lecomte du Nouÿ, known as André Lecomte du Noüy (1844 – 1914) <ref group="note">Different sources show both orthographies, 'Noüy' and 'Nouÿ'.</ref>, was an architect who was appointed by the Romanian king Carol I for the restoration of a number of Romanian monuments, especially the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral. His mother, Hermine Lecomte du Noüy (1854 – 1915), wrote many novels, one of which, ''Amitié amoureuse'', was translated into 16 languages and ran for 600 editions in France. His paternal uncle was the celebrated painter Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ (1842 – 1923).
Educated in Paris, du Noüy obtained the degrees of LL.B., Ph.B., Sc.B., Ph.D., and Sc.D.
In 1925 he married Mary Bishop Harriman (1891 – 1974), granddaughter of American businessman Oliver Harriman. In 1943, fleeing World War II, they moved to New York City, where Lecomte du Noüy died in 1947 after a short illness. After her husband's death Mary stayed in Paris until her death in 1974. Her body was brought back to the United States to rest beside her husband in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.<ref>[https://fr.findagrave.com/memorial/196841821/mary_bishop-lecomte_du_no%C3%BCy ''Find a Grave'', notice on Mary Bishop Harriman]</ref>
==Career== He was an associate member of the Rockefeller Institute working in Alexis Carrel's lab from 1920 through 1928, head for 10 years of the biophysics division of the Pasteur Institute,<ref name="DictPR">{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of philosophy and religion : Eastern and Western thought|last=Reese|first=William|date=1996|publisher=Humanities Press|isbn=0391038648|edition= New and enl.|location=Atlantic Highlands, N.J.|oclc=33983842|page=401}}</ref> and the author of some 200 published papers.<ref>Ockenga, Harold J., ''Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation'', May 1949.</ref>
He invented a tensiometer,<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.dartmouth.edu/~physics/labs/descriptions/surface.tension/fisher.surface.tensiometer.manual.pdf|title=Fisher Surface Tensiometer Model 20 Instruction Model|last=Fisher Scientific Co.|year=1973|edition=7th|location=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania|pages=4|archive-date=2019-07-13|access-date=2018-05-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190713190045/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~physics/labs/descriptions/surface.tension/fisher.surface.tensiometer.manual.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> a scientific apparatus that used his du Noüy ring method to measure the surface tension of liquids.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/sellers-exhibit/15/|title=Peter Sellers: A Pioneering Mathematician, A Renaissance Man|date=March 2017|website=The Rockefeller University Digital Commons|access-date=31 May 2018}}</ref>
Du Noüy believed that mankind should have confidence in science, but be aware that we know less about the material world than is commonly believed.
==Telefinalism== Du Noüy converted from agnosticism to Christianity. He supported a theistic and teleological interpretation of evolution.<ref name="Simpson 1964">Simpson, George Gaylord (1964). ''This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist''. Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 217–223.</ref> In his book ''Human Destiny'' he wrote that biological evolution continues to a spiritual and moral plane.<ref name="Simpson 1964"/> Du Noüy met Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who shared similar interests in evolution and spirituality.<ref>Shuster, George Nauman, and Ralph E. Thorson (1970). ''Evolution in perspective: commentaries in honor of Pierre Lecomte du Noüy''. University of Notre Dame Press, p. 268.</ref>
Du Noüy developed his own hypothesis of orthogenesis known as "telefinalism".<ref>Huggett, Richard (1998). ''Catastrophism: Asteroids, Comets and Other Dynamic Events in Earth History''. Verso, p. 102.</ref> According to Du Noüy evolution could not occur by chance alone and that on an average since "the beginning of the world it has followed an ascending path, always oriented in the same direction." He accepted naturalistic evolutionary mechanisms such as mutation and natural selection but believed science could not explain all evolutionary phenomena or the origin of life.<ref>Halbach, Arthur Anthony (1948). ''The Definition of Meaning in American Education''. Cath. University of Amer. Press, p. 8.</ref> According to his telefinalist hypothesis a transcendent cause which he equated with God is directing the evolutionary process.<ref name="Simpson 1964"/>
His "telefinalist" hypothesis was criticized by Carl Hempel,<ref>Hempel, Carl (1950). "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning". In ''Revue Internationale de Philosophie'' 11:42.</ref> Leo Koch and George Gaylord Simpson as nonscientific.<ref name="Simpson 1964"/><ref>Koch, Leo (1957). "Vitalistic-Mechanistic Controversy", ''The Scientific Monthly'', Vol. 85, No. 5, pp. 245–255.</ref>
==Publications== *''Between Knowing and Believing'' (1967) *''The Road to Reason'' (1948) *''Human Destiny'' (1947) * [https://archive.org/details/biologicaltime00leco/page/n3/mode/2up ''Biological Time''] (1937) *''An Interfacial Tensiometer for Universal Use'' (1925). ''The Journal of General Physiology''. Volume 7, issue 5, pp. 625–633
==Quotes== {{quotation|If telefinalism, by postulating the intervention of an Idea, a Will, a supreme Intelligence, throws a little light on the combined transformations leading through an uninterrupted line to Man, it seems impossible not to see in the particular transformations limited to the species something more than the simple play of physico-chemical forces and chance. ''Human Destiny'', p. 97|}}
== See also == * Du Noüy ring method
== Notes == <references group="note"/>
== References == {{Reflist}}
== Further reading == * {{cite book | author = Mary du Noüy | title = The Road to Human Destiny: A Life of Pierre Lecomte Du Noüy | year = 1955 | publisher = Longmans, Green }} *George Nauman Shuster, Ralph E. Thorson (1970). ''Evolution in Perspective: Commentaries in Honor of Pierre Lecomte du Noüy''. University of Notre Dame Press.
== External links == {{wikiquote}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20110604200001/http://www.pasteur.fr/infosci/archives/lnp1.html Papers of Pierre Lecomte du Noüy] (Pasteur Institute) * [https://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/collections/papers-pierre-lecomte-du-no%C3%BCy Papers of Pierre Lecomte du Noüy at The University of Arizona]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nouy, Pierre Lecomte du}} Category:1883 births Category:1947 deaths Category:20th-century French male writers Category:20th-century French philosophers Category:Academic staff of the University of Paris Category:Converts to Christianity from atheism or agnosticism Category:French former atheists and agnostics Category:French male non-fiction writers Category:Orthogenesis Category:Theistic evolutionists