Pierre Borel

For the French writer of the nineteenth century, see Petrus Borel.

Pierre Borel
Portrait of Pierre Borel by Jacques Pauthe [fr]
Born	c. 1620 Castres
Died	1671 (aged 50–51) Paris, France
Occupations	Chemist alchemist physician botanist

Pierre Borel (Latin: Petrus Borellius; c. 1620 – 1671) was a French chemist, alchemist, physician, and botanist.

Biography

Borel was born in Castres c. 1620. 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.^[1]

In 1663, he married Esther de Bonnafous. In 1674, he became a member of the Académie française. He died in Paris in 1671.^[1]

He concerned himself with an eclectic range of subjects such as optics, ancient history, philology, and bibliography.

Borel appears in the novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft, where he is represented as a necromancer. The novel begins with a quote from him.^[2]

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

1. Farber, Eduard (1970–1980). "Borel, Pierre". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 305–306. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.
2. Joshi, S. T.; Schultz, David E. (2001). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780313315787.

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

• (in French) Didier Foucault, Pierre Borel