Flourished 1260s
Engineer

Experimental Method. Also known as Peter Peregrinus (the Pilgrim) of Maricourt, Peter of Maricourt was a French engineer whose De magnete (On the Magnet), written on 8 August 1269, is the first major medieval scientificexperimental treatise composed in Western Europe.

Life and Writings. Peter's birth and death dates are unknown, and little is known about his life, except that he wrote his treatise while an engineer in the army of Charles I of Anjou during his siege of Lucerna, Italy. In De magnete, written in the form of a letter to a knight named Siger de Foucecourt, Peter castigated reliance on reason alone, stressing experimentation, manual skill, and technique as crucial to science.

Experiments with Magnetism. Peter's work on the magnet, which was used in the Renaissance by William Gilbert in his work On the Magnet (1600), describes how to construct a magnet so that...