Had it not been for the tireless efforts of French Minimite friar Marin Mersenne, communication describing the discoveries in science would have never been dispersed to the far corners of the mathematical and scientific worlds during the 17th century. During this critical period in the history of mathematics there were no scientific publications, bulletins, or newsletters. Instead, information was disseminated via scientific discussion circles such as Accademia dei Lineei (host to Galileo) and Accademia del Cimento in Italy, the Invisible College in England, and by written correspondence. Fortunately, Mersenne had a particular penchant for correspondence and a personal interest in the advancement of mathematical knowledge. It was said that to notify Mersenne of a discovery was the same as informing all of Europe.
Mersenne was born on September 8, 1588, near Oize, Sarthe, France, and later entered into service for the Roman Catholic Church as a devoted teacher in 1611. He attended school with Réne Descartes and the two men remained friends throughout their lives. It was Mersenne who defended Descartes' philosophy against his critics in the Church and it was to him that Descartes wrote first whenever he developed a new theory in mathematics or philosophy. It was also through Mersenne that Descartes gained fame in the circles of European intellectuals. Mersenne was also a staunch defender of Galileo, assisting him in translations of some of his mechanical works. And it was Mersenne, Galileo's representative in France, who circulated Galileo's question of the path of falling objects on a rotating Earth, leading Descartes to put forth the equiangular or logarithmic spiral r = eaΘ as the possible path. This is just one of many instances in which Mersenne acted as correspondent and intermediary for the mathematical breakthroughs of the 17th century.
Very often Mersenne was give privileged previews of works that were later lauded as masterpieces; Descartes' Le monde is one example. The treatise was given to Mersenne as a New Year's gift in 1634 while all the rest of Paris, aware of its creation, had to wait until after Descartes' death to read it.
In addition to his responsibilities as a teacher of philosophy and theology at Nevers and Paris, Mersenne also conducted weekly scientific discussions, from which the French Académie Royale des Sciences was established in 1699 in Paris. While credit for starting two separate discussion groups at around the same time is usually given to Descartes and Blaise Pascal, it was actually Mersenne who originated the gathering of great minds to exchange information. One proof of this is that the discussions led by "Father Mersenne" were already in place at the time Pascal began to join them when he was only 14 years old. Another is that Descartes spent much of his time living in Holland and outside of Paris.
Mersenne's writings was not exclusive to acting as the broker for the mathematical world, however. He wrote extensively on physics, mechanics, navigation, geometry, and philosophy. A portion of his life's work was also devoted to editing the compositions of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes , Theodosius, and Menelaus, as well as other ancient Greek mathematicians.
Much is owed to Mersenne for his work as correspondent within the mathematical world, but the reason he is still known today can be attributed to his "Mersenne numbers." Although Mersenne has been called "the famous amateur of science and mathematics," his contribution did much to launch the discoveries of those who succeeded him. Mersenne published his Cogitata Physico-Mathematica in 1644 and it is for this paper that he is best known. In the paper, he asserted that a particular formula could be used for finding prime numbers, positive numbers which are only divisible by one and the number itself. In the paper Mersenne gave no reasons for why he believed his number theories were correct and later the formulas were proved to be incomplete. Many of the large numbers he alleged to be prime were not. Even though Mersenne was not successful in his attempt to create an ironclad formula, his conjectures were the stimulus and basis for later research into the theory of numbers and the search for large prime numbers (called Mersenne primes).
Mersenne spent his life as a staunch supporter of experimentation and was indirectly responsible for the invention of the pendulum clock. He suggested to Christiaan Huygens that he experiment with timing objects rolling down a slanted surface by using a pendulum. Galileo had previously noted the characteristic timekeeping property of the pendulum but through Mersenne's suggestion it was Huygens who developed the general application of the pendulum as a time controller in clocks in 1656.
Cogitata Physico-Mathematica also contained explanations of some of Mersenne's experiments in the field of physics. These experiments were, no doubt, stimulated by his correspondence with Galileo, Huygens, Pierre de Fermat, and other men of science, but it appears that Mersenne was better at chronicling and appending the work of others than he was at immortalizing his own. The last of Mersenne's papers were published in 1644, containing a condensation of mathematics. Mersenne died in Paris in 1668 at the age of 60.
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