He was said to have started his studies without his parents' knowledge; they only became aware of them when Nicolas submitted and defended a thesis at the Lyon Collège de la Trinité in the presence of his father, who had been tricked into attending.
Sarrabat's scientific interests seem to have been very varied, and the Academie Royale des Belles-lettres, Sciences et Arts de Bordeaux awarded him several prizes for his work: one was for an essay on magnetism, the Nouvelle hypothèse sur les variations de l'aiguille aimantee, which argued that a spherical fire at the Earth's core was the driving force behind the expulsion of magnetic matter.
His most famous experiments involved immersing the roots of living plants in the red juice of Phytolacca berries in order to observe circulation.
[6] Though Caylus came from a famously Jansenist family, the Jesuit Sarrabat struck up a great friendship with him, describing him as "un très aimable homme".
[9] In astronomical literature his name is often spelt "Sarabat", following the spelling used by Jacques Cassini, who made further observations of the same comet.