Very few truly believe that rocks found on Earth can have extraterrestrial origins.

If they were recognized at all, their origin was controversial, with most commentators agreeing with Aristotle that they were terrestrial, and witnessed meteorite falls had been treated with great skepticism.

There have been anecdotal tales of unusual rocks found on the ground after fireballs had been seen in the sky, but such stories have been often dismissed as fantasy.

Serious debate concerning the unusual rocks had begun in 1794 when German physicist Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni published a book claiming that rocks had an extraterrestrial origin.(Westrum, Ron. "Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of Meteorites." Social Studies of Science vol. 8, no.4 Nov. 1978. Sage Publications, Ltd. 15 June 2009)

Jean-Baptiste Biot, born in Paris, had served in the artillery before he was appointed professor of mathematics at Beauvais in 1797.

He later went on to become a professor of physics at the Collège de France around 1800, and three years later is elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences.

In this year, Biot is sent by the Academy to report back a spectacular meteorite shower of more than three thousand fragments that had fallen upon the town of L'Aigle in Normandy (France) in the early afternoon of April 26, 1803.

After painstaking work in the field, Biot finds that the meteorites, or stones at this time, are from outer space.

Only after he is able to analyze the rocks at l’Aigle is it commonly accepted that the fireballs seen in the sky are meteors falling through the atmosphere.

Since Biot's time, analysis of meteorites has resulted in accurate measurements of the chemical composition of the solar system.

The composition and position of meteors in the solar system have also given astronomers clues as to how the solar system formed.

Jean-Baptiste Biot had been aboard for the first scientific hot-air balloon ride in 1804 with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac (NNDB 2009, O’Connor and Robertson 1997).

They had reached a height of seven thousand and sixteen meters meters (twenty-three thousand feet), quite dangerous without on-board oxygen.

In 1812, Biot had turned his attention to the study of optics, particularly the polarization of light.

Prior to the nineteenth century, light was believed to consist of discrete packets called corpuscles.

During the early nineteenth century, many scientists have begun to disregard the corpuscular theory in favor of the wave theory of light.

Biot begins his work on polarization to show that the results he is obtaining could appear only if light were made of corpuscles.

His work in chromatic polarization and rotary polarization greatly advances the field of optics, although it was later shown that his findings could also be obtained using the wave theory of light (Frankel, Eugene. "Corpuscular Optics and the Wave Theory of Light: The Science and Politics of Revolution in Physics." Social Studies of Science vol. 6, no 2.May 1976. Sage Publications, Ltd. 15 June 2009).

Biot's work on the polarization of light has led to many breakthroughs in the field of optics.

Liquid crystal displays (LCDs), such as television and computer screens, use light that is polarized by a filter as it enters the liquid crystal, to allow the liquid crystal to modulate the intensity of the transmitted light.

This happens as the liquid crystal's polarization varies in response to an electric control signal applied across it.

Polarizing filters are used extensively in photography to cut out unwanted reflections or to enhance reflection.

Biot is also a member of the Legion of Honor; he is elected chevalier in 1814.