Alfred Joseph Naquet

Who was Alfred Joseph Naquet?

Alfred Joseph Naquet, French chemist and politician, was born at Carpentras, on the 6th of October 1834. He became professor in the faculty of medicine in Paris in 1863, and in the same year professor of chemistry at Palermo, where he delivered his lectures in Italian.

He lost his professorship in 1867 along with his civic rights when he was condemned to fifteen months' imprisonment for his share in a secret society. On a new prosecution in 1869 for his book Religion, propriété, famille he took refuge in Spain. Returning to France under the government of Émile Ollivier he took an active share in the revolution of 4 September 1870 and became secretary of the commission of national defence.

In the French National Assembly he sat on the extreme Left, consistently opposing the opportunist policy of successive governments. Re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies of France he began the agitation against the marriage laws with which his name is especially connected. His proposal for the re-establishment of divorce was discussed in May 1879 and again in 1881 and 1882, becoming law two years later.