| Chapter 1: | A Brief Introductory Survey of Dupin’s Life |
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made a baron, at the same time as the chemist Louis-Jacques Thénard (1777–1857). In 1832, he was elected to membership of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (in the fourth section of the academy, ‘Political Economy and Statistics’), recently reestablished by the academic politician François Guizot (1787–1874). In 1834, Dupin was appointed a government minister, although for a period of only nine days, 10 to 18 November 1834 (ACM).
The year 1819 marked a new period in Dupin’s life—that of an educator and economist. Appointed to a chair at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers on 25 November 1819, he began in 1820 (his course was inaugurated on 2 December) to teach, mécanique appliquée aux arts. Then, in November 1824, his new course in géométrie et méchanique [sic] appliquées aux arts (geometry and mechanics applied to the arts and crafts) began, with more content than the previous course. It must be emphasized that in this establishment, Dupin was not simply a professor; although he would have been content just teaching geometry and mechanics, he was also an organizer. Moreover, his ambition was to produce equivalent courses in the French provinces, and it was for this reason that he addressed to the minister for the navy a long communiqué entitled Enseignement de la classe ouvrière (Education of the working class). Dupin aimed to create education for the workers in fifty French towns. He began his treatise thus:
To his role of educator, one must also add his political role; in Dupin, the two were closely linked. In 1827, shortly before the elections of April 1828, when he was député for the Tarn, he produced a treatise