Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

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Nicolas Fatio de Duillier bigraphy, stories - Mathematicians

Nicolas Fatio de Duillier : biography

26 February 1664 – 12 May 1753

Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (alternative names are Facio or Faccio; 26 February 1664 – 12 May 1753) was a Swiss mathematician known for his work on the zodiacal light problem, for his very close relationship with Isaac Newton, for his role in the Newton v. Leibniz calculus controversy, and for originating the "push" or "shadow" theory of gravitation. He also developed and patented a method of perforating jewels for use in clocks.

Life

Fatio was born in 1664 as the seventh of fourteen children of Jean-Baptiste and Cathérine Fatio in Basel, Switzerland. The family moved in 1672 to Duillier. In 1682 at the age of 18 Fatio travelled to Paris to perform astronomical studies under the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini at the Parisian observatory. In 1686, Fatio by chance became a witness to a conspiracy aimed at William of Orange, which he helped to foil. In the same year he made the acquaintance of Jakob Bernoulli and Christiaan Huygens, with whom a particularly close cooperation was developed. The main content of their work was the calculus. In 1687 he traveled to London and made the acquaintance of John Wallis and Edward Bernard (1638-1697) and worked out a solution of the inverse tangent problem. He also was on friendly terms with Gilbert Burnet, John Locke, Richard Hampden and his son John Hampden. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1688 on the recommendation of John Hoskyns.

He had a relationship with Isaac Newton, and from the beginning he was impressed by Newton’s gravitational theory. In 1691, he planned to prepare a new edition of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, but never finished it. (One of Newton’s biographers [Michael White, in "Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer" ] claimed that the relationship may have been romantic, though this is apparently based on subjective interpretations of incomplete letters.) In 1694, their relationship diminished. At this time, several letter exchanges with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also took place.

In 1707, Fatio came under the influence of a fanatical religious sect, the Camisards, which ruined Fatio’s reputation. He left England and took part in pilgrim journeys across Europe. After his return only a few scientific documents by him appeared. He died in 1753 in Maddersfield near Worcester, England. After his death his Geneva compatriot Georges-Louis Le Sage tried to purchase the scientific papers of Fatio. These papers together with Le Sage’s are now in the Library of the University of Geneva.

Eventually he retired to Worcester, where he formed some congenial friendships, and busied himself with scientific pursuits, alchemy, and the mysteries of the cabbala. In 1732 he endeavoured, but it is thought unsuccessfully, to obtain through the influence of John Conduitt [q. v.], Newton’s nephew, some reward for having saved the life of the Prince of Orange. He assisted Conduitt in planning the design, and writing the inscription for Newton’s monument in Westminster Abbey. He died on 28 April or 12 May 1753 (Gent. Mag. xxiii. 248), and was buried at the church of St. Nicholas, Worcester (Green, Worcester, ii. 93–4; cf. Nash, Worcestershire, vol. ii. supplement, p. 101).

Popular culture

Fatio appears as a supporting character in Michael White’s novel Equinox (2006), Neal Stephenson’s novel series, The Baroque Cycle (2003-04), and in Gregory Keyes’s novel series, The Age of Unreason (1998-2001).

Notes

Biography

Work in Paris

Before he was eighteen he wrote to Dominic Cassini suggesting a new method of determining the sun’s distance from the earth, and an explanation of the form of Saturn’s ring. Encouraged by Cassini’s reply, he went to Paris in the spring of 1682, and was kindly received.Gent. Mag. viii. 95 In 1683 Cassini gave his theory of the zodiacal light. Faccio followed his observations, repeated them at Geneva in 1684, and gave in 1685 new and important developments of this theory (CHOUëT in Les Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, March 1685, pp. 260–7). They were published in his ‘Lettre à M. Cassini … touchant une lumière extraordinaire qui paroît dans le ciel depuis quelques années,’ 12mo, Amsterdam, 1686. Faccio also invented some useful machines. He studied the dilatation and contraction of the pupil of the eye, and described the fibres of the anterior uvea and the choroid in a letter to Mariotte dated 13 April 1684.