Claudine Picardet

Poullet was born in Dijon and died in Paris. She was the eldest daughter of a royal notary, François Poulet de Champlevey. In 1755, Poullet married Claude Picardet, a barrister. Claude Picardet served as a councillor of the Table de marbre, and later a member of the Académie royale des sciences, arts, et belles-lettres de Dijon. This gave her a broad entrée to scientific, bourgeoisie and high society circles. She attended lectures and demonstrations and became active as a scientist, salonnière, and translator. She published initially as "Mme P*** de Dijon". ==Translation==

Picardet translated thousands of pages of scientific works, many of them by the leading scientists of the day, from multiple languages, for publication in French. Her work can be seen in the context of a shift in the nature of scientific translation, away from the work of "solitary translators". Works translated By 1774, at the urging of Guyton de Morveau, Picardet was translating John Hill's Spatogenesia: the Origin and Nature of Spar; Its Qualities and Uses (English, 1772) for publication in Jean-André Mongez's Journal de physique. Mme. Picardet is credited with bringing Scheele's work on oxygen to the notice of scientists in France. Picardet was publicly identified as a translator, for the first time, in a review of the book by Jérôme Lalande which appeared in the Journal des savants in July 1786. In both of these translations, contributions by other authors (such as annotations) are clearly identified. Mme. Picardet is variously credited with inspiring and possibly helping to write Madame Lavoisier's translation and critique of Richard Kirwan's 1787 Essay on Phlogiston. She translated some of Kirwan's papers. Claudine Picardet translated scientific papers from Swedish (Scheele, Bergman), German (Johann Christian Wiegleb, Johann Friedrich Westrumb, Johann Carl Friedrich Meyer, Martin Heinrich Klaproth), English (Richard Kirwan, William Fordyce), Italian (Marsilio Landriani) and possibly Latin (Bergman). Although she most frequently translated works on chemistry and mineralogy, she did translate some meteorological works. These included "Observationes astron. annis 1781, 82, 83 institutæ in observatorio regio Havniensi" (1784), reporting the astronomical observations of the longitude of the Mars knot, made in December 1783 by Thomas Bugge. Picardet's translation was published as "Observations de la longitude du nœud de Mars faite en Décembre 1873, par M. Bugge" in the Journal des savants (1787). ==Scientific work==

Picardet had attended Morveau's chemistry courses and had studied the minerals in the Dijon Academy's collection. With Guyton de Morveau and other members of the Bureau de traduction de Dijon she carried out chemical experiments and mineralogical observations to confirm the content of the works they were translating. The "Translator's Advertisement" for Werner's treatise on minerals clearly states that she was skilled in laboratory and cabinet observations. She even developed her own terms in French, based on her direct observations of minerals, to capture Werner's neologisms. ==Portrait==

(left), Claudine Picardet (with book), Berthollet, Fourcroy, Lavoisier (seated) and Guyton de Morveau (right) As early as 1782, Guyton de Morveau had proposed a systematic approach to chemical nomenclature in which simple substances received simple names indicative of their chemical structure, such as hydrogen and oxygen. Compounds received names indicative of their constituent parts, such as sodium chloride and ferric sulfate. From 1786 to 1787, Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine-François Fourcroy met almost daily, working intensively to write Méthode de nomenclature chimique (“Method of Chemical Nomenclature”), which they intended to be "a complete and definitive reform of names in inorganic chemistry". A painting of Lavoisier with the co-authors of Méthode de nomenclature chimique is believed to include both Mme. Lavoisier and Mme. Picardet. Mme. Lavoisier stands at the left of the group. The woman next to her is believed to be Mme. Picardet, holding a book emblematic of her work as a translator. ==Impact==

It was due to the work of both Claudine Picardet and her second husband Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau that Dijon was recognised internationally as a scientific center. As one of the two most prolific translators in chemistry during the 1780s, Madame Picardet increased the availability of chemical knowledge at a crucial time during the chemical revolution, particularly the knowledge of salts and minerals. Her activities supported the publication of specialised scientific journals and helped to establish the use of editorial features such as the date of first publication. The value of her work as a translator was recognized by scholars of her time both nationally and internationally. == Legacy ==

In 2026, Picardet was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of '''' and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower. ==See also==