Pierre Borel ( la, Petrus Borellius; c. 1620 – 1671) was a French savant: a

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

(and reputed

alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...

), physician, and botanist. Borel was born in Castres. He became a doctor of medicine at the University of Montpellier in 1640. In 1654 he became physician to the King of France,

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

. In 1663 he married Esther de Bonnafous. In 1674 he became a member of the

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

. He died in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. He concerned himself with an eclectic range of subjects:

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

, ancient history, philology and bibliography. His biographers have tended to deplore his spreading of himself over so many areas. In ''

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'' is a short horror novel (51,500 words) by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in early 1927, but not published during the author's lifetime. Set in Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, it w ...

'', H. P. Lovecraft (mis)represents Borellus (sic) as a potent necromancer. In fact, the novels opens with a quote from Borellus.

Works

* ''Les antiquités de Castres'', 1649 * ''Bibliotheca chimica'', 1654 * ''Trésor de recherches et d'antiquités gauloises et françaises'', 1655 * ''Historiarium et observationum medico-physicarum centuria IV'', 1653, 1656 * ''De vero telescopii inventore'', 1655. * ''Vitae Renati Cartesii, summi philosophi compendium'', 1656. * ''Discours nouveau prouvant la pluralité des mondes'', 1657.

Notes

References

*Marie-Rose Carré, ''A Man between Two Worlds: Pierre Borel and His Discours nouveau prouvant la pluralité des mondes of 1657'', Isis, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 322–335 *Pierre Chabbert, ''Pierre Borel (1620 ?-1671)'', Revue d’histoire des sciences 21 (1968), 303-43.

External links

* Didier Foucault
''Pierre Borel''
__NOTOC__ {{DEFAULTSORT:Borel, Pierre 1620 births 1689 deaths People from Castres French archaeologists French naturalists 17th-century French chemists 17th-century antiquarians