Marin Mersenne place of birth Oizé
Life
Mersenne was born of Jeanne Moulière, wife of Julien Mersenne, peasants who lived near Oizé, County of Maine (present-day Sarthe, France). He was educated at Le Mans and at the Jesuit College of La Flèche. On 17 July 1611, he joined the Minim Friars and, after studying theology and Hebrew in Paris, was ordained a priest in 1613.
Between 1614 and 1618, he taught theology and philosophy at Nevers, but he returned to Paris and settled at the convent of L'Annonciade in 1620. There he studied mathematics and music and met with other kindred spirits such as René Descartes, Étienne Pascal, Pierre Petit, Gilles de Roberval, Thomas Hobbes, and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. He corresponded with Giovanni Doni, Jacques Alexandre Le Tenneur, Constantijn Huygens, Galileo Galilei, and other scholars in Italy, England and the Dutch Republic. He was a staunch defender of Galileo, assisting him in translations of some of his mechanical works.
For four years, Mersenne devoted himself entirely to philosophic and theological writing, and published Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Celebrated Questions on the Book of Genesis) (1623); L'Impieté des déistes (The Impiety of the Deists) (1624); La Vérité des sciences (Truth of the Sciences Against the Sceptics, 1624). It is sometimes incorrectly stated that he was a Jesuit. He was educated by Jesuits, but he never joined the Society of Jesus. He taught theology and philosophy at Nevers and Paris.
In 1635 he set up the informal Académie Parisienne (Academia Parisiensis), which had nearly 140 correspondents, including astronomers and philosophers as well as mathematicians, and was the precursor of the Académie des sciences established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666. He was not afraid to cause disputes among his learned friends in order to compare their views, notable among which were disputes between Descartes and Pierre de Fermat and Jean de Beaugrand. Peter L. Bernstein, in his book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, wrote, "The Académie des Sciences in Paris and the Royal Society in London, which were founded about twenty years after Mersenne's death, were direct descendants of Mersenne's activities."In 1635 Mersenne met with Tommaso Campanella but concluded that he could "teach nothing in the sciences ... but still he has a good memory and a fertile imagination." Mersenne asked if Descartes wanted Campanella to come to Holland to meet him, but Descartes declined. He visited Italy fifteen times, in 1640, 1641 and 1645. In 1643–1644 Mersenne also corresponded with the German Socinian Marcin Ruar concerning the Copernican ideas of Pierre Gassendi, finding Ruar already a supporter of Gassendi's position. Among his correspondents were Descartes, Galileo, Roberval, Pascal, Beeckman and other scientists.
He died on 1 September 1648 of complications arising from a lung abscess.
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