Marin Mersenne Research Articles

Word as definition. A key principle of the Comenian project for universal language: its sources and contexts

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to re-examine the intellectual history of a principle central to seventeenth-century universal language projects. We call this principle ‘word as definition’. It is the requirement that every word in the dictionary of a new language should already be, by its shape, a definition of what it denotes: the root of the word would express the proximate genus and the affixes the specific difference. In Comenius, we find it first formulated in the Via lucis and later elaborated in the Panglottia manuscript. Besides the medieval and early modern mystical traditions, Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld and Marin Mersenne are key figures in the process of its emergence. In this respect, Comenius plays a role in the link between the ‘continental’ and the British approach to the problem of language reform.

Songs at the Docks: Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Musical Entanglements in Seventeenth-Century Marseille

ABSTRACT Building on recent musicological research that emphasizes the mobility of songs, this article investigates Marseille as a site of cultural encounter and highlights the musical presence of enslaved galley rowers and translators in the city. It focuses on several descriptions of music-making in southern France by the French antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and his efforts to find materials on Ottoman and Persian music for the music theorist Marin Mersenne. Utilizing the constant influx of goods and people into the city, Peiresc relied on mercantile networks to obtain transcriptions of songs and music theoretical texts, engaging various informers and translators from the eastern Mediterranean. Focusing on a transcription of a single song that has been lost, the article traces the song’s connections to cultures of collection, cultural translation, and transcription, with singing constituting a central site in which to negotiate and perform otherness.

Jean Pecquet (1622–1674). To the 400th anniversary of the birth

The article is dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding French anatomist, physician and philosopher Jean Pecquet (1622–1674). Pecquet’s biography is connected with the city of Dieppe, where the future scientist was born and got his primary education, and with Paris, where he made his main discoveries in anatomy. Throughout his life, Pecquet collaborated with many prominent scientists of that time (Jacques Mentel, Louis Gayant, Jean Riolan (the Younger)), including not only physicians and anatomists, but also physicists such as Blaise Pascal, Edme Mariotte, Marin Mersenne and Evangelista Torricelli. Pecquet’s most famous discovery is the chyle cictern, or cisterna chyli. The structure was named after of the scientist – “Pecquet’s reservoir (cistern)”. But more revolutionary discovery made by Pecquet is revealing and proving the fact that the lymphatic ducts flow into the superior vena cava indirectly through the venous angles and refuting the conventional opinion on the drainage of lymph into the liver. An important help in Pecquet’s anatomical research and experiments was his passion for the physical and mathematical sciences. In collaboration with Edme Marriott, Pecquet studied the structure of the eyeball and turned out to be more foresighted, because, unlike Marriott, he correctly understood the role of the retina in the functioning of the eye as an organ of vision. Pecquet was one of William Harvey’s supporters regarding his concept of blood circulation. He introduced cutting-edge at that moment technologies into the anatomy methodology, including animal experiments in vivo, and made a fateful contribution to the progress of anatomical science.

Echoes behaving badly? Rhetorical and acoustic experimentalism in the echo fantasias of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and his contemporaries

Abstract The 17th-century ‘echo fantasia’ for keyboard has long posed problems of classification and attribution. This article focuses on a particularly problematic example of the genre, the Echo Fantasia in d attributed to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (d4). Once expurgated from the Sweelinck canon, d4 differs substantially from its compatriots, most notably in its erratic echo scheme in which some echoes are marked louder than their antecedents, and others take the shape of improvisatory variants. Viewing d4 from a wider perspective, this article positions the echo fantasia at the intersection of early 17th-century rhetorical and acoustic experimentalism. On the one hand, literary portrayals of the figure of Echo relied on rhetorical devices—such as anadiplosis—that also characterize d4. On the other hand, d4’s misbehaving echoes evoke the playful experimentalism of early scientists investigating echoes, including Francis Bacon, Isaac Beeckman and Marin Mersenne. Akin to a miniature musical laboratory, the echo fantasia was a genre in which the strangest echo effects could be replicated at the organ.

Marin Getaldić – preteča novovjekovnog pristupa istraživanju prirode

Marin Getaldić – preteča novovjekovnog pristupa istraživanju prirode

La naturaleza de las entidades matemáticas. Gassendi y Mersenne: objetores de Descartes

La naturaleza de las entidades matemáticas ha sido un problema filosófico recurrente en diversas épocas; aquí mostraré que fue una pieza clave en la definición de las posturas ontológicas durante la Modernidad temprana. La piedra de toque para la fundamentación de los conocimientos científicos fue el carácter que se atribuyó a las entidades matemáticas —y, en general, a las entidades abstractas, incluidas las lógicas— en la filosofía natural. Expongo dos posiciones de la Modernidad: la que defendió René Descartes, quien las concibió como entidades perennes, inherentes a la propia constitución y funcionamiento de la mente y la de autores como Pierre Gassendi y Marin Mersenne, quienes defendieron el origen empírico e instrumental de esas entidades.

Hobbes on the Ratios of Motions and Magnitudes

Hobbes intended and expected De Corpore to secure his place among the foremost mathematicians of his era. This is evident from the content of Part iii of the work, which contains putative solutions to the most eagerly sought mathematical results of the seventeenth century. It is well known that Hobbes failed abysmally in his attempts to solve problems of this sort, but it is not generally understood that the mathematics of De Corpore is closely connected with the work of some of seventeenth-century Europe’s most important mathematicians. This paper investigates the connection between the main mathematical chapters of De Corpore and the work of Galileo Galilei, Bonaventura Cavalieri, and Gilles Personne de Roberval. I show that Hobbes’s approach in Chapter 16 borrows heavily from Galileo’s Two New Sciences, while his treatment of “deficient figures’ in Chapter 17 is nearly identical in method to Cavalieri’s Exercitationes Geometricae Sex. Further, I argue that Hobbes’s attempt to determine the arc length of the parabola in Chapter 18 is intended to use Roberval’s methods to generate a more general result than one that Roberval himself had achieved in the 1640s (when he and Hobbes were both active in the circle of mathematicians around Marin Mersenne). I claim Hobbes was convinced that his first principles had led him to discover a “method of motion” that he mistakenly thought could solve any geometric problem with elementary constructions.

French Philosophy, 1572–1675 by Desmond Clarke

Reviewed by: French Philosophy, 1572–1675 by Desmond Clarke Michael Moriarty Desmond Clarke. French Philosophy, 1572–1675. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi + 275. Cloth, £30.00. Desmond Clarke adopts a broad understanding of the term ‘philosophy,’ informed by close attention to historical context. He discusses the limitations of early modern philosophy as an academic discipline, plausibly connecting its tendency to conservatism with the fact that philosophy teachers were generally recent graduates, employed for quite short periods, and thus ill-equipped to develop the subject. On the other hand, as he observes, “what is now described as philosophical reasoning or analysis was widely distributed in the publications of lawyers, theologians, natural philosophers, and political commentators” (1). This obliges him to cast his net very wide, far beyond the range of authors one would encounter in a more traditional history of philosophy; and the result of his extensive “excavation[s]” (1) is an extremely stimulating and rewarding book. The introduction on “Philosophy in Context” stresses further constraints on philosophical activity, such as censorship and the persecution of dissidents, but also mentions the emergence of new institutions, such as academies, offering scope for freer and more innovative philosophical discussion. It is followed by chapters on scepticism, faith and reason, natural philosophy, theories of the mind, ethics, and political philosophy; one would have expected these topics to be covered, but the final chapter, on the equality of the sexes, addresses an issue long and harmfully overlooked; and, over and above the book’s many other merits, the inclusion of this topic is to be especially commended. This inclusive historical approach does not imply a wholly historical perspective: Clarke sometimes introduces modern insights into his exposition, as when he suggests that scholastic natural philosophers in French colleges were “intuitively aware” of the Duhem/Quine thesis, so they could absorb challenges to their theories from empirical observation (22). He is notably even-handed: in highlighting the problems of the traditional Aristotelian philosophy, he also emphasizes the weaknesses of the alternative solutions propounded by the more innovative authors. The book ends with the twofold conclusion that “it would be impossible to revert to substances and forms as explanatory postulates, and that it would be equally unwarranted to believe that their replacements were not also subject to subsequent possible rejection” (252). Clarke is willing, and rightly, to leave France for purposes of comparison or illustration: the discussion of Pascal on the vacuum is enriched by the comparison with Robert Boyle (112–13). This chapter on natural philosophy is one of the strongest in the book, complicating as it does the idea that new empirical evidence straightforwardly refuted traditional theories. What emerges from the volume as a whole is a picture of French philosophy that far transcends simplistic labels such as rationalism and empiricism, and stresses the tentative and exploratory aspects of the discourses studied: this is especially clear in the account of scepticism, where the excellent discussions of Francisco Sanches, Pierre Gassendi, and Marin Mersenne emphasize not only the critical but the constructive aspects of their thought. Even in relation to Descartes, Clarke stresses the radical implications of the doctrine of God’s creation of the eternal truths: “eternal truths are necessary only in the sense that God created us in such a way that we perceive them as necessary” (61); no absolute truth is therefore attainable for us. At times he is prepared to advance unorthodox interpretations, as when he argues that “Descartes cannot have proposed substance dualism as a theory of human nature” because of the problems it fails to solve, such as interaction between spiritual substances and bodies (154). But surely this does not prove that Descartes did not uphold the theory. The critical edge is perhaps keenest where Blaise Pascal is concerned, in the chapters on faith and reason and on ethics: Pascal’s claims as to the cognitive impairment due to the Fall are dismissed as ideology, since they cannot be falsified by human evidence (96); but surely Pascal’s contention is that there is enough empirical evidence of our failure, on account of moral and psychological factors, to live up to our rational capacities for it to be worthwhile considering...

Music and the Making of Modern Science by Peter Pesic (review)

MUSIC AND SCIENCE Music and the Making of Modern Science. By Peter Pesic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. [viii, 347 p. ISBN 9780262027274 (hardcover), $40; ISBN 9780262324373 (e-book), $20.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.Music and the Making of Modern Science is a provocative title. What Peter Pesic means by is gradually revealed during the course of his In the introduction (p. 6), he says, beyond the current sense of music as particular specimens of fine arts the sonic realm, the ancient concept of mousik-e was far more inclusive of and philosophical studies. Though, what follows, I perhaps should have used throughout this Greek term to emphasize its larger meaning, I decided to use our word 'music,' which was understood that more inclusive way by many of the historical actors the book. Specifically, at the end of chapter 1 (p. 20), Pesic refers to music as a mathematical harmonic science. In early and middle chapters, he refers to mundana. In the final chapter (p. 282), he confirms that in the sisterhood of the quadrivium, 'music' meant the dispassionate 'music of the spheres' (musica mundana) rather than the expressive art of moving the passions, both known since antiquity. It helps, therefore, to read Pesic's case studies of modern scientists since 1600 with a medieval mind. A better title for the book would be Musica Mundana and the Making of Modern Science.The question of how long the influence of musica mundana persisted after the Renaissance is interesting. Graduates of music programs may recall-or simply reread the opening chapters of their music history textbooks such as Donald Jay Grout's A History of Western Music-that musica mundana was one of three musicae posited by Boethius (ca. A.D. 480-524). Then, the remainder of those textbooks, musica mundana is seldom if ever mentioned, likewise musica humana, but the descendants of musica instrumentalis (as Western classical music) are featured. Yet writings about musica mundana loom large early primary sources for music; translations of many of them are among the most significant offerings from the publishing firm the American Institute of Musicology. While Pesic's book is published by a scientific press, it reaffirms several classic writings for music readers.The book's thesis (p. 1) is that music- musica mundana, mostly-has informed explorations science, not the other way around. Its chapters convey a sense that the methods initially developed for musica mundana were adapted for scientific inquiries through the late nineteenth century. Medieval astronomers from Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-1382; chap. 2) through Johannes Kepler (1571-1630; chap. 5) were educated thoroughly musica mundana, which had its antecedents Boethius's interpretations of Pythagorean traditions of wholenumber string ratios and of Plato's comments about music (especially the opening books of The Republic) (chap.1). Nicolaus Copernicus's (1473-1543) rearrangement of the solar system from geocentric to heliocentric led his surviving friends and foes to appropriate from music terms like harmonia to describe his influence (chap. 3). Meanwhile, Francois Viete's (1540-1603) development of algebra heralded a transformation of the number from a means of counting to a symbol for calculation; and unlike the counting numbers, the new calculating symbols could be used to stand for rational and irrational numbers. Likewise, Pesic touts, a few composers of the sixteenth century, including Nicola Vicentino (1511-ca. 1576), explored enharmonic tunings that used both rational and irrational string ratios (chap. 4).Rene Descartes (1596-1650; chap. 6) and his correspondent Marin Mersenne (1588- 1648; chap. 7) regarded the basic musical intervals derived from earthly physical overtones as primary over the elegant-looking whole-number ratios favored by the Pythagoreans. Isaac Newton (1642-1726/7; chap. 8), Leonhard Euler (1707-1783; chaps. …

Bad Latin, Bad Manners: Giovanni Battista Doni, Marin Mersenne, and Literary Style in Seventeenth-Century Music Theory

An overlooked copy of Marin Mersenne’s Harmonicorum libri (1636) with extensive annotations by theorist Giovanni Battista Doni offers a glimpse of how early modern music scholars assessed each other’s work behind closed doors. Although Doni treated Mersenne courteously in more public settings, his private marginalia reveal an overwhelmingly negative assessment of Mersenne and his work. Doni bypassed matters of contemporary musical practice and instead criticized Mersenne’s Latin, his prose style, his manners, and his failure to meet (Doni’s) standards for humanistic scholarship. Doni’s preoccupation with literary style and his discretion in not airing his criticisms publicly illuminate the social and professional worlds where musical knowledge was generated. Doni showed good courtly taste in valuing eloquence as much as (or more than) technical precision, even in music-theoretical writing. Moreover, it would have been impolitic for a courtier such as Doni to reveal his full judgement of Mersenne in the greater Republic of Letters, where complex political and institutional networks intersected.

Music and the making of modern science

Music played a significant role in the making of modern science. In ancient Greek natural philosophy, music formed the earthly meeting place between numbers and perception. For the next two millennia, music remained a central part of higher education, united with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the quadrivium. Accordingly, innovations reverberated between all these fields. This book presents the “scientific revolution” more as a phase in the restoration and augmentation of the ancient project of musicalizing the world than a change in the basic project of natural philosophy. After discussing the original Pythagorean synthesis of music, mathematics, and sense-experiment, the book presents cases in which prior developments in music led to some new direction in science from the fourteenth century to the twentieth. These include encounters between harmony and fifteenth-century cosmological controversies, between musical initiatives and irrational numbers, between vibrating bodies and emergent electromagnetism. The book presents new accounts of Johannes Kepler’s use of music, of René Descartes’s and Marin Mersenne’s interweaving of music and natural philosophy, of Isaac Newton’s imposition of the musical scale on color, of Leonhard Euler’s musical work in relation to his mathematics and optical theory, of Thomas Young’s musical optics, of Hermann von Helmholtz’s and Bernhard Riemann’s development of new concepts of space from studies of seeing and hearing, of atomic spectra as overtones, of Max Planck’s experiments with harmoniums and choruses in relation to his subsequent quantum theory, and of the continuing quest for cosmic harmonies in contemporary physics.

Mersenne and the Art of Delivery

This article seeks to broaden our conventional historical account of the intersection between music and rhetoric by examining that intersection in the music-theoretical writings of Marin Mersenne (1588–1648). Mersenne’s discussion of rhetoric, found chiefly in his Harmonie universelle (1636–37), emphasizes delivery (pronuntiatio or actio) rather than style (elocutio) as the basis for comparing the two disciplines. As such, it offers a notable contrast to the more familiar analogies put forth by the German theorists who have tended to dominate our perspective. At the heart of Mersenne’s theorization is the notion that both musical performance and oratorical delivery share their foundations in the physical world of sound channeled through the vibrating vocal apparatus of the human body. Delivery is thus in principle amenable to the physical analysis that Mersenne so valued as a scientific thinker. This emphasis on the voice, moreover, lets him situate rhetoric in terms of the relationship between the voice and the soul, thus linking delivery with divinity. With both oratory and music being understood as specialized forms of sound production, music is shown to aid rhetoric just as much as rhetoric aids music—perhaps even more so. Since Mersenne locates the commonality between music and rhetoric in the human body, his theory attempts to define a rhetoric of emotional persuasion, rather than one of stylistic surface. Emotional persuasion is effected through vocal inflections, which he terms “accents of the passions.” Most important, for Mersenne these “accents” achieve their highest purpose when used for religious persuasion through preaching.

Beeckman’s engagement of mechanics and philosophy

Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637) was a master craftsman from the Zeeland town Middelburg who studied to become schoolmaster in the Holland towns of Rotterdam and Dordrecht. He was a strict Calvinist and a tireless observer and contemplator of natural phenomena. Foremost, he was the first mechanical philosopher in Europe who played a key role in the intellectual development of Rene Descartes (1596–1650) and inspired pioneers of mechanistic thinking Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) and Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655). We know this because Beeckman kept a journal throughout his life in which he recorded his observations and ideas. The journal is a treasure trove of early modern knowing. Beeckman had a keen eye for the world around him and responded to what he saw, as well as the reflections of others, with a highly original mind. The journal was discovered in 1905 by Cornelis de Waard (1879–1963), who subsequently edited and published it between 1939 and 1953 (Beeckman 1939–1953). Although some acquaintances and visitors saw the journal and a selection of his notes was published by his brother in 1644, the significance of Beeckman’s ideas and his decisive role in the development of early modern philosophy have largely remained unknown. De Waard’s edition did not truly change this: only with the new Descartes studies of the 1980s did the significance of Beeckman for the new philosophy become wider known (Gaukroger 1995). At that moment also the first monograph on Beeckman finally appeared: a study of his life and work in the form of the 1983 Utrecht dissertation of Klaas van Berkel (van Berkel 1983). It suffered, however, a similar fate as John Schuster’s 1977 meticulous study of Descartes’s intellectual development (Schuster 1977): both remained largely inaccessible for an international audience. Few could read the Dutch of van Berkel’s dissertation, whereas Schuster’s was only available via microfilm.

Vertical Projection in a Resisting Medium: Reflections on Observations of Mersenne

This article, inspired by a 17th-century woodcut, validates empirical observations of Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) on timing of vertically-launched projectiles for a general mathematical model of resistance.

Use of the hammered dulcimer to demonstrate physical acoustics principles

In 1636 AD, Marin Mersenne described the law of vibrating strings that relates frequency to length, tension, and density in L'Harmonie Universelle. One of the instruments described by Mersenne is the psalterion or hammered dulcimer. The dulcimer is a versatile struck-string instrument, based on the circle of fifths, in which the sound generation and radiation are linked to many physical acoustics principles. Some of these principles are basic: how string properties affect fundamental frequency; how the soundboard and body cavity give rise to different resonances; how hammer construction and excitation affect the spectrum; etc. Because of the ease of demonstrating acoustical principles with the hammered dulcimer, a 9/8 backpack-size dulcimer has been included as part of the new ASA outreach workshops held in conjunction with semiannual meetings. A description of these efforts and a short demonstration of the hammered dulcimer will be given. More advanced concepts to be discussed include high-speed video results of the hammer-string interaction as well as near-field acoustical holography analyses on a 16/15 Songbird® dulcimer. The holography shows how the sound holes, traditionally thought to be merely decorative, significantly influence the radiated sound.

John Bulwer (1606–1656) and Some British and French Contemporaries

SummaryJohn Bulwer’s (1606–1656) work was unknown in 17th–18th century France. In 1827, when Joseph-Marie Degérando (1772–1842) became curious about the relation between the methods respectively of Bulwer and John Wallis (1616–1703), the pioneer oral instructor of the deaf in Britain, he had to query Charles Orpen, M. D. (1791–1856) in Dublin because no copy of Bulwer’sPhilocophus(1648) could be found in Paris. In fact, Theodore Haak (1605–1690) had sent a copy of this book from London to Père Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) in Paris in July 1648, but none of Mersenne’s circle could read English, and Mersenne died several weeks later. In that context, this paper presents a comparison of Bulwer’s views with those of the Cartesians and Port-Royalists. Wallis claimed he knew of no work on speech for the deaf prior to his own, but he must have known about thePhilocophusfrom the time of its publication, five years before hisDe Loquela(1653) and nearly 14 years before he began teaching the deaf.

Small Skills, Big Networks: Marin Mersenne as Mathematical Intelligencer

Writing in August 1634, the French polymath Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc reflected upon Marin Mersenne's endeavours. Mersenne, Peiresc asserted, had forced himself into frontiers that are a little more in fashion of the times than these prolix treaties of the schools that so few men handle outside of the colleges.1 Peiresc was quite prescient to realize the novel claims that Mersenne was promoting. From the middle of the 1620s until his death in 1648, Mersenne encouraged discussion on a number of new mathematical concepts, ideas that lacked a secure home within the Aristotelian university curriculum.2 By mathematics, I am referring to mixed mathematics, the application of arithmetic and geometry often to physical processes, and related topics in natural philosophy: examples include Galilean mechanics, the question of whether a void exists in nature, and analysis of conic sections and their spatial counterparts.3 For Peiresc and others, Mersenne was an exemplar of new, heterodox ideas: though he was a member of the religious Minim order, he was respected widely as a mathematician, he lived a gregarious life in cosmopolitan Paris, and he was an intimate friend of the famed French mathematician Rene Descartes as well as a correspondent with the Italian Galileo Galilei and the Dutch Christiaan Huygens.4 But while Mersenne is still remembered as a mathematician and correspondent of famous mathematicians, Peiresc's description of Mersenne as trend-conscious or even a trendsetter has been effectively forgotten. In this essay I want to show that, far from accidental, Mersenne's trendiness framed much of his work as a mathematician and indefatigable network builder. It was also a sign of the limitations of his mathematical skills.Only recently have historians of science begun to examine epistolary culture as a genre, highlighting interactions in formerly unrecognizable communities and social threads that support scientific advancements. Compared to correspondences that have been well studied, Mersenne's is unlike what preceded or followed it. It does not resemble the Latin astronomical correspondence of Tycho Brahe, which contains fewer than 500 letters.5 Nor can it be likened to the humanistic and astrologically inflected letters of his other astronomical forerunner, Johannes Kepler.6 Mersenne's writings also differ from Henry Oldenburg's later multidisciplinary and generally vernacular correspondence of 3,139 letters (a handful later discovered), much of which was written during his tenure as secretary of the Royal Society.7 Yet Mersenne's seventeen-volume correspondence has salient characteristics.8 Though numbering 1,871 entries in its sixteen main volumes, the Mersenne correspondence actually contains 1,896 items.9 Of these, 803 items were addressed to Mersenne and a scant 318 items - roughly one-sixth of the correspondence - originated from Mersenne's hand.10 Though only approximately 59% of the correspondence was to or from Mersenne, additional letters were included merely because they bore Mersenne's name in context, thus exaggerating Mersenne's image as mailbox of Europe and Secretary-General of the Republic of relative to (better-edited correspondences of) his understudied contemporaries.11 Many of Mersenne's letters seem to have been lost - especially those sent to Descartes, who was itinerant in the Netherlands during much of Mersenne's communicative heyday. Nevertheless, Mersenne's epistolary traffic soared as his own book production subsided in the mid1630s.12 Whenever possible, Mersenne opted for vernacular correspondence unless he was citing books or other classical sources (he wrote in French and Latin). Also notable is its international flavour, with a preponderance of writing on mathematical topics. Letters in his network often crossed from Catholic lands to the Protestant Netherlands, fostering talk between individuals of different faiths. While these exchanges occurred throughout the Thirty Years' War, there is little evidence of that conflict causing problems; if anything, Mersenne's correspondents usually accessed the ordinary post [

Sandra Macpherson Harm’s Way: Tragic Responsibility and the Novel FormHarm’s Way: Tragic Responsibility and the Novel Form. Sandra Macpherson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp. xi+237.

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Could, or should, the ancient Greeks have discovered the Lucas-Lehmer test?

The Lucas-Lehmer (LL) test is the most efficient known for testing the primality of Mersenne numbers, i.e. the integers Ml = 2l − 1, for l ≥ 1. The Mersenne numbers are so-called in honour of the French scholar Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), who in 1644 published a list of exponents l ≤ 257 which he conjectured produced all and only those Ml which are prime, for l in this range, namely l = 2,3,5,7, 13, 17, 19,31,67, 127 and 257 [1]. Mersenne's list turned out to be incorrect, omitting the prime-producing l = 61, 89 and 107 and including the composite-producing l = 67 and 257, although this was not finally confirmed until 1947, using both the LL test and contemporary mechanical calculators [2]. The LL test is based on the following theorem.

Marin Mersenne, 1588–1648

Marin Mersenne was many things: scientist, mathematician and writer. He did original work on acoustics and on prime numbers; today his name is linked to a family of primes called ‘Mersenne primes’. But his greatest contribution was his work in propagating a culture of scientific inquiry in Europe — a culture which emphasized communication and dissemination and learning from one’s peers. The work done on the cycloid illustrates this theme beautifully. This article looks at some work for which Mersenne is best known.