caption death_date death_place birth_place birth_date image article_title
flamel sainte-geneviève des ardens -lrb- from Étienne françois villain , 1761 as -rrb- represented in 1402 on the portal of -lrb- rumoured immortality -rrb- ca. 1418 paris , france pontoise ca. 1330 nicolas flamel histoire critique.jpg nicolas flamel

nicolas flamel

nicolas flamel -lrb- ; prob .
pontoise , ca 1330 -- paris , march 22 , 1418 -rrb- was a successful french scribe and manuscript-seller .
after his death flamel developed a reputation as an alchemist believed to have discovered the philosopher 's stone and achieved immortality .
however , these legendary accounts only appeared in the seventeenth century .
according to texts ascribed to flamel almost two hundred years after his death , he had learned alchemical secrets from a jewish `` converso '' on the road to santiago de compostela .
as deborah harkness put it , `` others thought flamel was the creation of 17th-century editors and publishers desperate to produce modern printed editions of supposedly ancient alchemical treatises then circulating in manuscript for an avid reading public . ''
he has since appeared as a legendary alchemist in various fictional works .
