Robertson : Siècle des Lumières, théâtre des ombres, spectacle des savoirs

In the framework of the conferences of the Alliance française de Liège

The Liégeois Etienne-Gaspard Robertson (1763-1837) is a contemporary of the era of revolutions that made our epoch emerge. His curiosity, the multiplicity of his activities, on the edge of science and the arts, his adventurous life, make him an extraordinary and yet too little-known figure.

The conference will endeavor to trace this man, but the challenge is not small: at 7000 meters of altitude in a hot-air balloon, in the electric arcs of his experiments with Volta, in his phantasmagoria or appear and disappear from the Greek gods and skeletons as if by enchantment, in the agitated streets of Napoleon’s Paris, in the meanderings of memory.

Philippe Raxhon is an honorary FNRS researcher and ordinary professor at the University of Liège, where he directs the Service d’histoire contemporaine and the Research Unit for Memory and Prospective.

He has just published at the Presses Universitaires de Liège the book of the Bicentennial of the University of Liège Memory and Prospective. University of Liège (1817-2017).