Marin Mersenne

Marin Mersenne, Marin Mersennus or le Père Mersenne

Marin Mersenne
(French: [mɛʀsɛn]; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a
French polymath, whose works touched a wide variety of fields.
He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for
Mersenne prime numbers, those which can be written in the form
Mn = 2n − 1 for some integer n. He also developed Mersenne's
laws, which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string (such as
may be found on guitars and pianos), and his seminal work on
music theory, Harmonie universelle, for which he is referred to as
the "father of acoustics".[1][2] Mersenne, an ordained priest, had
many contacts in the scientific world and has been called "the
center of the world of science and mathematics during the first
half of the 1600s"[3] and, because of his ability to make
connections between people and ideas, "the post-box of
Europe".[4] He was also a member of the Minim religious order
and wrote and lectured on theology and philosophy. Born 8 September 1588
Oizé, Maine, France
Died 1 September 1648
(aged 59)
Contents
Paris, France
Life Nationality French
Works Known for Mersenne primes
Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (1623) Mersenne's laws
L'Harmonie universelle (1636)
Scientific career
Other
Influences René Descartes
Battles with occult and mystical thinkers Étienne Pascal
Music Pierre Petit
List of works Gilles de Roberval
See also Thomas Hobbes
Nicolas-Claude Fabri
References
de Peiresc
Further reading Giovanni Doni
External links Jacques Alexandre Le
Tenneur
Constantijn Huygens
Life Galileo Galilei

Mersenne was born of Jeanne Moulière, wife of Julien Mersenne, peasants who lived near Oizé, County
of Maine (present-day Sarthe, France).[5] He was educated at Le Mans and at the Jesuit College of La
Flèche. On 17 July 1611, he joined the Minim Friars and, after studying theology and Hebrew in Paris,
was ordained a priest in 1613.
Between 1614 and 1618, he taught theology and philosophy at Nevers, but he returned to Paris and
settled at the convent of L'Annonciade in 1620. There he studied mathematics and music and met with
other kindred spirits such as René Descartes, Étienne Pascal, Pierre Petit, Gilles de Roberval, Thomas
Hobbes, and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. He corresponded with Giovanni Doni, Jacques Alexandre
Le Tenneur, Constantijn Huygens, Galileo Galilei, and other scholars in Italy, England and the Dutch
Republic. He was a staunch defender of Galileo, assisting him in translations of some of his mechanical
works.

For four years, Mersenne devoted himself entirely to philosophic and theological writing, and published
Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Celebrated Questions on the Book of Genesis) (1623); L'Impieté
des déistes (The Impiety of the Deists) (1624); La Vérité des sciences (Truth of the Sciences Against the
Sceptics, 1624). It is sometimes incorrectly stated that he was a Jesuit. He was educated by Jesuits, but he
never joined the Society of Jesus. He taught theology and philosophy at Nevers and Paris.

In 1635 he set up the informal Académie Parisienne (Academia Parisiensis), which had nearly 140
correspondents, including astronomers and philosophers as well as mathematicians, and was the
precursor of the Académie des sciences established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1666. He was not afraid
to cause disputes among his learned friends in order to compare their views, notable among which were
disputes between Descartes and Pierre de Fermat and Jean de Beaugrand.[6] Peter L. Bernstein, in his
book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, wrote, "The Académie des Sciences in Paris and
the Royal Society in London, which were founded about twenty years after Mersenne's death, were direct
descendants of Mersenne's activities."[7]

In 1635 Mersenne met with Tommaso Campanella but concluded that he could "teach nothing in the
sciences ... but still he has a good memory and a fertile imagination." Mersenne asked if Descartes
wanted Campanella to come to Holland to meet him, but Descartes declined. He visited Italy fifteen
times, in 1640, 1641 and 1645. In 1643–1644 Mersenne also corresponded with the German Socinian
Marcin Ruar concerning the Copernican ideas of Pierre Gassendi, finding Ruar already a supporter of
Gassendi's position.[8] Among his correspondents were Descartes, Galileo, Roberval, Pascal, Beeckman
and other scientists.

He died September 1 through complications arising from a lung abscess.

Works

Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (1623)

Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim was written as a commentary on the Book of Genesis and
comprises uneven sections headed by verses from the first three chapters of that book. At first sight the
book appears to be a collection of treatises on various miscellaneous topics. However Robert Lenoble has
shown that the principle of unity in the work is a polemic against magical and divinatory arts, cabalism,
and animistic and pantheistic philosophies. He mentions Martin Del Rio's Investigations into Magic and
criticises Marsilio Ficino for claiming power for images and characters. He condemns astral magic and
astrology and the anima mundi, a concept popular amongst Renaissance neo-platonists. Whilst allowing
for a mystical interpretation of the Cabala, he wholeheartedly condemned its magical application,
particularly angelology. He also criticises Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Francesco Giorgio
and Robert Fludd, his main target. Fludd responded with Sophia cum moria certamen (1626), wherein he
admits his involvement with the Rosicrucians. The anonymous Summum bonum (1629), another critique
of Mersenne, is an openly Rosicrucian text. The cabalist Jacques Gaffarel joined Fludd's side, while
Pierre Gassendi defended Mersenne.

L'Harmonie universelle (1636)

L'Harmonie universelle is perhaps Mersenne's most influential work. It is one of the earliest
comprehensive works on music theory, touching on a wide range of musical concepts, and especially the
mathematical relationships involved in music. The work contains the earliest formulation of what has
become known as Mersenne's laws, which describe the frequency of oscillation of a stretched string. This
frequency is:

1. Inversely proportional to the length of the string (this was known to the ancients; it is usually
credited to Pythagoras)
2. Proportional to the square root of the stretching force, and
3. Inversely proportional to the square root of the mass per unit length.
The formula for the lowest frequency is

where f is the frequency, L is the length, F is the force and μ is the mass per unit length.

In this book, Mersenne also introduced several innovative concepts that can be considered the basis of
modern reflecting telescopes:

Much earlier than Laurent Cassegrain, he found the fundamental arrangement of the two-
mirror telescope combination, a concave primary mirror associated with a convex
secondary mirror, and discovered the telephoto effect that is critical in reflecting telescopes,
although he was far from having understood all the implications of that discovery.
Mersenne invented the afocal telescope and the beam compressor that is useful in many
multiple-mirror telescope designs.[9]
He recognized also that he could correct the spherical aberration of the telescope by using
aspherical mirrors and that in the particular case of the afocal arrangement he could do this
correction by using two parabolic mirrors, though a hyperboloid is required.[10]
Because of criticism that he encountered, especially from Descartes, Mersenne made no attempt to build
a telescope of his own.

Other
Mersenne is also remembered today thanks to his association with the Mersenne primes. The Mersenne
Twister, named for Mersenne primes, is frequently used in computer engineering and in related fields
such as cryptography.

However, Mersenne was not primarily a mathematician; he wrote about music theory and other subjects.
He edited works of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and other Greek mathematicians. But perhaps his
most important contribution to the advance of learning was his extensive correspondence (in Latin) with
mathematicians and other scientists in many countries. At a time when the scientific journal had not yet
come into being, Mersenne was the centre of a network for exchange of information.

It has been argued that Mersenne used his lack of mathematical specialty, his ties to the print world, his
legal acumen, and his friendship with the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes (1596–
1650) to manifest his international network of mathematicians.[11]

Mersenne's philosophical works are characterized by wide scholarship and the narrowest theological
orthodoxy. His greatest service to philosophy was his enthusiastic defence of Descartes, whose agent he
was in Paris and whom he visited in exile in the Netherlands. He submitted to various eminent Parisian
thinkers a manuscript copy of the Meditations on First Philosophy, and defended its orthodoxy against
numerous clerical critics.

In later life, he gave up speculative thought and turned to scientific research, especially in mathematics,
physics and astronomy. In this connection, his best known work is Traité de l'harmonie universelle (also
referred to as Harmonie universelle) of 1636, dealing with the theory of music and musical instruments.
It is regarded as a source of information on 17th-century music, especially French music and musicians,
to rival even the works of Pietro Cerone.

One of his many contributions to musical tuning theory was the suggestion of

as the ratio for an equally-tempered semitone ( ). It was more accurate (0.44 cents sharp) than
Vincenzo Galilei's 18/17 (1.05 cents flat), and could be constructed using straightedge and compass.
Mersenne's description in the 1636 Harmonie universelle of the first absolute determination of the
frequency of an audible tone (at 84 Hz) implies that he had already demonstrated that the absolute-
frequency ratio of two vibrating strings, radiating a musical tone and its octave, is 1 : 2. The perceived
harmony (consonance) of two such notes would be explained if the ratio of the air oscillation frequencies
is also 1 : 2, which in turn is consistent with the source-air-motion-frequency-equivalence hypothesis.

He also performed extensive experiments to determine the acceleration of falling objects by comparing
them with the swing of pendulums, reported in his Cogitata Physico-Mathematica in 1644. He was the
first to measure the length of the seconds pendulum, that is a pendulum whose swing takes one second,
and the first to observe that a pendulum's swings are not isochronous as Galileo thought, but that large
swings take longer than small swings.[12]

Battles with occult and mystical thinkers

Two German books which circulated around Europe in 1614-15, Fama fraternitatis and Confessio
Fraternitatis, claimed to be manifestos of a highly select, secret society of alchemists and sages called
the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians. The books were hoaxes, but were obviously written by a small group
who were reasonably knowledgeable about the sciences of the day, and their main theme was to promote
educational reform (they were anti-Aristotelian). However, these books also promoted an occult view of
science containing elements of Paracelsian philosophy, neo-Platonism, Cabalism and Hermeticism. In
effect, they sought to establish a new form of scientific religion with some pre-Christian elements.
Mersenne led the fight against acceptance of these ideas, particularly those of Rosicrucian promoter
Robert Fludd, who had a lifelong battle of words with Johannes Kepler. The Rosicrucian ideas were
defended by many prominent men of learning, and some members of the European scholarly community
boosted their own prestige by claiming to be among the selected members of the Brotherhood. However,
it is now generally agreed among historians that there is no evidence that the order of Rosicrucians ever
existed.[13]

During the mid-1630s Mersenne gave up the search for physical causes in the Aristotelian sense
(rejecting the idea of “essences”, which were still favoured by the scholastic philosophers) and taught
that true physics could only be a descriptive science of motions (Mécanisme), which was the direction set
by Galileo Galilei. Mersenne had been a regular correspondent with Galileo and had extended the work
on vibrating strings originally developed by his father, Vincenzo Galilei.[14]

Music
An air attributed to Mersenne was used by Ottorino Respighi in his second suite of Ancient Airs and
Dances.

List of works
Euclidis elementorum libri, etc. (Paris, 1626)
Les Mécaniques de Galilée (Paris, 1634)
Questions inouies ou récréation des savants (1634)
Questions théologiques, physiques, etc. (1634)
Harmonie universelle First edition on line (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5471093v)
from Gallica (Paris, 1636–1637). Translation to English by Roger E. Chapman (The Hague,
1957)
Nouvelles découvertes de Galilée (1639)
Cogitata physico-mathematica (1644)
Universae geometriae synopsis (1644)

See also
Catalan–Mersenne number/Catalan's Mersenne conjecture
Equal temperament
List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
Seconds pendulum

References
1. Bohn, Dennis A. (1988). "Environmental Effects on the Speed of Sound" (http://ise.iqcatalog
s.com/AVCat/images/documents/pdfs/eespeed.pdf) (PDF). Journal of the Audio
Engineering Society. 36 (4): 223–231.
2. Simmons, George F. (1992/2007). Calculus Gems: Brief Lives and Memorable
Mathematics, p. 94. MAA. ISBN 9780883855614.
3. Bernstein, Peter L. (1996). Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (https://archive.
org/details/againstgodsremar00pete_0/page/59). John Wiley & Sons. p. 59 (https://archive.o
rg/details/againstgodsremar00pete_0/page/59). ISBN 978-0-471-12104-6.
 4. Connolly, Mickey; Motroni, Jim; McDonald, Richard (25 October 2016). The Vitality
Imperative: How Connected Leaders and Their Teams Achieve More with Less Time,
Money, and Stress (https://books.google.ie/books?id=3kurDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT80&lpg=PT8
0&dq=%22the+post+box+of+europe%22&source=bl&ots=ZuigePt5Gt&sig=aeQNS5KE-hFD
TC4KCFOreS-HHyM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQqYDykL_YAhUBy6QKHUQ_Aa8Q6A
EIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20post%20box%20of%20europe%22&f=false). RDA
Press. ISBN 9781937832926.
5. Hauréau, Barthélemy (1852). A. Lanier (ed.). Histoire littéraire du Maine (https://books.googl
e.com/books?id=loWjSLNDtBoC&q=Mersenne#v=snippet&q=Mersenne%20321&f=false)
(in French). 1. p. 321.
6. Sergescu, Pierre (1948). "Mersenne l'Animateur" (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/pr
escript/article/rhs_0048-7996_1948_num_2_1_2726). Revue de l'Histoire des Sciences et
Leur Applications. 2 (2–1): 5–12.
7. Bernstein 1996, p. 59.
8. Murr, Sylvia, ed. (1997). Gassendi et l'Europe (in French). Paris: Vrin. ISBN 978-2-7116-
1306-9.
9. Wilson, Todd (2007), Reflecting Telescope Optics I: Basic Design Theory and its Historical
Development (https://books.google.com/books?id=PuN7l2A2uzQC&pg=PA4), Springer,
p. 4, ISBN 9783540765813.
10. Pendergrast, Mark (2003). Mirror Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection
(https://books.google.com/books?id=T4-GErgSbU0C&pg=PA88). Basic Books. pp. 88–89.
ISBN 0786729902.
11. Grosslight, Justin (2013). "Small Skills, Big Networks: Marin Mersenne as Mathematical
Intelligencer". History of Science. 51: 337–374. doi:10.1177/007327531305100304 (https://
doi.org/10.1177%2F007327531305100304).
12. Koyre, Alexander (1992). Metaphysics and Measurement (https://books.google.com/books?
id=rJLQyZ4ccMgC&pg=PA100). Taylor & Francis. p. 100. ISBN 2-88124-575-7.
13. Debus, Allen G. The Chemical Philosophy (https://books.google.com/books?id=TjLDAgAAQ
BAJ).
14. Heilbron J. L. (1979) [1] (https://books.google.com/books?id=UlTLRUn1sy8C) Electricity in
the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm,
Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mersenne, Marin". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge
University Press.

Further reading
Baillet, Adrien (1691). Vie de Descartes.
Dear, Peter Robert (1988). Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Gehring, F. (1922) “Mersennus, Marin (le Père Mersenne)”. Grove's Dictionary of Music and
Musicians (ed. J.A. Fuller Maitland).
Grosslight, Justin (2013). "Small Skills, Big Networks: Marin Mersenne as Mathematical
Intelligencer". History of Science 51:337–374.
Moreau, Roger (2012). Marin Mersenne et la naissance de l'esprit scientifique. Editions
Anagrammes, Perros Guirec. (ISBN 978-2-84719-089-2).
Poté, J. (1816). Éloge de Mersenne. Le Mans.

External links
 IMSLP (http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Mersenne,_Marin) Traité de l'Harmonie Universelle.
The Correspondence of Marin Mersenne (http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/blog/?catalogue=ma
rin-mersenne) in EMLO (http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/home)
Philippe Hamou. "Marin Mersenne" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mersenne/). Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Marin Mersenne" (http://www-history.mcs.st-and
rews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mersenne.html), MacTutor History of Mathematics archive,
University of St Andrews.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Marin Mersenne" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cath
olic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Marin_Mersenne). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert
Appleton Company.
"Marin Mersenne" (http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=125434), Mathematics
Genealogy Project.
Minimospedia "Marin Mersenne" (http://www.estudiosminimos.eu/minimospedia/mersenn
e,%20marin.html) especially for bibliography

Documentaries

Marin Mersenne—The Birth of Modern Geometry (https://vimeo.com/99434544) (UK Open

University TV documentary made in 1986 and transmitted on BBC2)

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