author
J.-B. (Jean-Baptiste) Pérès
d. 1840
Best remembered for a witty 1827 pamphlet that playfully argued Napoleon never existed, this French writer and scholar turned satire into a clever weapon against shaky reasoning. His work has lasted because the joke still feels surprisingly modern.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Jean-Baptiste Pérès (1752–1840) was a French mathematician and physicist who taught with the Oratorians in Lyon. Later, he worked as a magistrate in Agen and finished his career as the city's municipal librarian.
He is chiefly known for his short satirical work Grand Erratum—also published as Comme quoi Napoléon n'a jamais existé—which appeared anonymously in 1827. In it, he mockingly "proves" that Napoleon was only a solar myth, using exaggerated logic to parody the kind of criticism he opposed.
That little pamphlet gave Pérès an afterlife far beyond his own time. Though he held scholarly and public roles, he is remembered today for a sharp, funny piece of intellectual satire that still gets quoted whenever people want to show how clever arguments can go wildly wrong.