Jacques-Arsène D’Arsonval (8.06.1851-31.12.1940) was a French physicist and physiologist, a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1894) and its president in 1917. He was born in La Borie. In 1882-1910 he headed a laboratory at the Collège de France, and in 1894—1930 he was professor there.
His research in physics was in the field of electricity and its application in medicine, and of optics. He invented the magnetic telephone, an instrument for measuring direct electric current, together with M. Deprez the aperiodic galvanometer (1882), in which the current measured passes through a light moving coil placed in a magnetic field (the Deprez–D’Arsonval galvanometer), and the radiomicrometer for measurements in the infrared region of the spectrum (1886). He used high-frequency currents for medical purposes and in 1891 proposed a method of electrotherapy which came to be called darsonvalisation. He is the founder of physiotherapy. In 1888 he applied vacuum thermal insulation in biological experiments.