Pierre Prevost (physicist)

Pierre Prevost (French: [pʁevo]; 3 March 1751 – 8 April 1839) was a Genevan philosopher and physicist.

In 1791 he explained Pictet's experiment by arguing that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are.

He became close friends with Jean Jacques Rousseau and, a little later, with Dugald Stewart, having previously distinguished himself as a translator of and commentator on Euripides.

Frederick II of Prussia secured him in 1780 as professor of philosophy and made him member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin.

After some years spent on political economy and on the principles of the fine arts (in connection with which he wrote, for the Berlin Memoirs, a remarkable dissertation on poetry) he returned to Geneva and began his work on magnetism and on heat.