Louis Necker

Louis Necker, called de Germany (31 August 1730 in Geneva – 31 July 1804 in Cologny) was a Genevan mathematician, physicist, professor and a banker in Paris. He was the elder brother of Jacques Necker, minister of Finance in France when the French Revolution broke out. Biography Louis Necker studied mathematics and physics at the Academy of Geneva. He finished his studies in philosophy with a thesis on electricity (1747), then graduated in law (1751). For a while he became the governor of probably Charles Christian, Prince of Nassau-Weilburg and Simon August, Count of Lippe-Detmold during their stay in Geneva and traveled with them to the University of Turin. He managed a boarding school for young Englishmen held by his father Charles Frederick, lawyer and professor of law at the Geneva Academy. He was appointed as the hofmeister of a Baron van Van Wassenaer and a Bentinck. In 1752 he purchased 's physics laboratory and in 1757 acceded the chair of mathematics and the honorary chair of Experimental Physics of the Academy of Geneva. As a correspondent of the Académie royale des sciences he had written an article for the Encyclopedia on Friction in mechanics. In 1759 he lost his wife Isabelle André, whom he had married in 1752 and came from Marseille. In 1761 he was forced to resign from his professorship after a scandal (Vernes-Necker case). In 1762 with the help of his brother he was appointed in a trading house in Marseille and added to his last name de Germany, after the family estate near Rolle. He was dropped from the Académie des sciences's list of Corresponding Members in 1767.