BERT, PAUL (1833-1886), French physiologist and poli tician, was born at Auxerre (Yonne). He was appointed professor of physiology successively at Bordeaux (1866) and the Sorbonne (1869). In 1874 he was elected to the Assembly, where he sat on the extreme left, and in 1876 to the chamber of deputies. He was one of the most determined enemies of clericalism, and an ardent advocate of "liberating national education from religious sects, while rendering it accessible to every citizen." In 1881 he was minister of education and worship in Gambetta's short-lived cab inet, and created a sensation by a lecture on modern Catholicism, delivered in a Paris theatre, in which he ridiculed the fables and follies of the chief religious tracts and handbooks that circulated especially in the south of France. Early in 1886 he was appointed resident-general in Annam and Tongking, and died of dysentery at Hanoi, Nov. II, of that year. But he was more distinguished as a man of science than as a politician or administrator. His classical work, La Pression barometrique (1878), embodies researches that gained him the biennial prize of 20,000 francs from the Academy of Sciences in 1875, and is a comprehensive investigation on the physiological effects of air-pressure, both above and below the normal. His earliest researches, which provided him with material for his two doctoral theses, were devoted to animal grafting and the vitality of animal tissue. After about 188o he produced sev eral elementary text-books of scientific instruction, and also vari ous publications on educational and allied subjects.