ABSTRACT
Fulgence Fresnel was in Baghdad when he heard about the disaster which destroyed the results of his work at Babylon. It is unclear whether he really cared much about it any more, for he seems to have been living in a world of his own. His secretary stuck it out with him till the end, and he died in Baghdad a few months later, mentally broken, at the age of seventy-one. His close friend Jules Mohl gave a memorial speech at the Société asiatique, announcing that ‘the society has lost one of its oldest and keenest members’. In a brief sketch of his life he pointed out how this man, one of the leading Arabists in France, and a wealthy man who conducted his studies as a hobby, had lost his considerable fortune because of an excessive generosity and some bad speculations at the bourse. He had then entered the consular corps and served in various places in the Arab-speaking world, for instance, at Jedda. He had chased after phantoms all his life, spending several years of his life on an attempt to establish a scientific expedition to Central Africa, where he was convinced the unicorn could be found. He sent agents into the jungles, but they returned only with loads of rhino horns. Mohl summed up his evaluation of Fresnel as follows:
He was a uniquely gifted man who distinguished himself by the utmost courtesy, the most elegant conversation, a generosity which was destructive for his private fortune, an unusually lively wit, an amazing intelligence; he leaves behind him traces in science which will never be entirely obliterated, but he did not accomplish all that his talents promised, all the happiness his soul deserved, because he never learnt to discipline his spirit.
(Mohl 1879: 81)