Bert

Bert, Paul, was born at Auxerre in 1833, and after a training for the legal profession took to physiology, and in 1863 became assistant to Claude Bernard, the famous professor at the College of France. In 1867 he was elected to the chair of physiology at Bordeaux, and in 1869 filled the same post in Paris. On the fall of the empire he came forward as a politician, was returned to the Chamber of Deputies, and as Minister of Education and Public Worship, under Gambetta, he was active in suppressing the clerical schools. He was sent out as governor to Tonkin in 1886, and died very soon afterwards of fever. He wrote a good deal on scientific and educational subjects, and his little book for children, La Premiere Annee d'Enseignement Scientifique, has been translated into several languages.