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Marin Mersenne, Marin Mersennus or even lupus erythematosus Père Mersenne (September 8, 1588 – September 1, 1648) was a French theologian, philosopher, mathematician and music theorist.
Life
Innate of peasant parents touching Oizé, Maine (present day Sarthe), he was educated at Le Mans and at the Jesuit College of La Flèche, where he was the schoolfellow & friend of René Descartes. In July 17, 1611, he joined the Minim Friars, and, when researching theology and Hebrew in Paris received his full holy orders in 1613.
For the instance, he taught philosophy at Nevers but returned to Paris in 1620 at the convent of Fifty'Annonciade. There, using more kindred spirits like Descartes, Étienne Pascal, Gilles de Roberval and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, he studied mathematics and music. He corresponded by using Giovanni Doni, Constantijn Huygens and other scholars within Italy, England and Holland. For little joe years he devoted himself completely to philosophical & theological writing, & promulgated Quaestiones celeberrimae around Genesim (1623); ''Fifty'Impieté des déistes (1624); La Vérité des sciences (1624). These are for instance incorrectly stated that he was the Jesuit. He was educated by Jesuits, however he never joined a Society of Jesus. He taught theology & philosophy at Nevers & Paris. He visited Italy 3 days, inside 1640, 1641 and 1645.
He died across complications arising from either surgery.
Work
Mersenne is remembered in todays world thanks to his association sustaining a Mersenne primes. Nevertheless, he was non primarily the mathematician; he wrote all about music theory and other cases. He edited works of Euclid, Archimedes, and more Greek mathematicians. However his maybe first contribution to the advance of learning was his extensive correspondence (inside Latin, of course) by owning mathematicians & more man of science inside several countries. At once while a scientific journal had not however come to life, Mersenne was the center of a network for exchange of tools.
His philosophic works come characterized by wide scholarship & a narrowest theological orthodoxy. His greatest service to philosophy was his enthusiastic defence of Descartes, whose professional he was inside Paris & whom he visited within exile in the Netherlands. He submitted to various eminent Parisian thinkers the manuscript copy of the Meditations, and defended its orthodoxy against many clerical critics. Inside within the future life, he gave higher speculative thought & turned to research project, especially in maths, natural philosophy & uranology. Of his works in that connection a better known is Fifty'Harmonie universelle'' (1636) treating using a theory of music and musical instruments.
One of his major contributions to musical tuning theory was the guide of when the ratio for a semitone. It was supplementary exact than Vincenzo Galilei's 18/17, & can be constructed by having straightedge and compass. Mersenne's description in the 1636 Harmonic universelle of the number 1 absolute determination of the frequency of an hearable tone (at 84 Hz) implies that he experienced already demonstrated that the absolute-frequency ratio of deuce vibrating strings, radiating a musical tone & its octave, is as One : Deuce. A perceived harmony (consonance) of deuce such notes would exist as explained in case a ratio of a air oscillation frequencies is likewise I : Two, which successively is uniform sustaining the source-air-motion-frequency-equivalence hypothesis.
His ''Traité delaware 50'harmonie universelle (1627) is regarded as a source of facts in 17th century music, especially French music and musicians, to rival even a works of Pietro Cerone.
Bibliography
Works by Mersenne
Euclidis elementorum libri, etc. (Paris, 1626)
Les Mécaniques de Galilée (Paris, 1634)
Questions inouies ou recreations des initiate (1634)
Questions théologiques, physiques, etc. (1634)
Nouvelles découvertes first state Galilée (1639)
Cogitata physico-mathematica (1644)
Universae geometriae precis (1644)
Works about Mersenne
Adrien Baillet, Vie de Descartes (1691)
Poté, Éloge diamond state Mersenne (1816)
Gehring, F. (1922) "Mersennus, Marin (le Père Mersenne)", Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (ed. J.The. Fuller Maitland)
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