Cornélie Lebon-de Brambilla

Cornélie Lebon (née de Brambilla) (16 January 1767 – 2 September 1812), was a French engineer. Her husband Philippe Lebon (1767–1804), invented a form of gas lighting during the French Revolutionary period. Following his early death, she continued his work on the thermolamp designed for urban lighting.

Françoise-Thérèse-Cornélie (known as Cornélie) de Brambilla was born on 16 January 1767 in Ypres, Belgium, into a family of artists and doctors from Padua and Milan. On 10 March 1792, she married engineer and inventor Philippe Lebon in Paris and took his surname.^[1]

When Philippe Lebon was struggling to get paid by the French Republican government for his work, Cornélie Lebon travelled to Paris to put the family's case. One of her letters survives, dated 22 Messidor Year VII of the French Republic:

The wife of citizen Lebon to the citizen Minister of the Interior.

It is neither charity nor mercy that I ask of you, but justice. For two months, I have been languishing 120 leagues from my household. Do not force a father to leave, through further delay and lack of means, a state to which he has sacrificed everything... Have consideration for our position, citizen; it is overwhelming and my request is just. There is more than one reason to persuade me that my approach will not be fruitless with a minister who makes it his law and duty to be just.

Yours sincerely, Your devoted fellow citizen, ‘Madame Lebon, née de Brambilla.^[2]

Her plea was successful and some monies owed were paid.^[2]

Lebon was widowed in 1804. Although there is no mention of her scientific work in her husband's memoirs, she played a key role in the early attempts to develop gas lighting.^[3] Her influence was felt particularly in Liège, Belgium, where she installed one of the first gas lighting demonstrations at the premises of the Société Libre d'Émulation.^[1]

In 1811, Lebon took a house in 11 Rue de Bercy in Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Paris. She installed a thermolamp and decorated the house, courtyard and gardens with jets of light, opening the house to the public to demonstrate the possibilities of heating and lighting using hydrogen gas extracted from wood.^[2]

In 1811, she published a memoir on the distillation of wood^[2][4] which she submitted to the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale (Society for the Encouragement of National Industry), which awarded her a prize on 4 September 1811.^[2]

Three months later, the Minister of the Interior, Jean-Pierre, Count of Montalivet, sent Lebon a decree granting her a life pension of 1,200 francs as ‘widow of Sieur Lebon, inventor of the thermolamp’.^[2]

Lebon died in Paris on 2 September 1812, aged 45.^[1]

• Prix des Arts chimiques in 1811.^[1]

In 2026, Cornélie Lebon was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.^[1][5][6][7]