Melchisédech Thévenot

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Melchisédech (or Melchisédec) Thévenot (ca. 1620-October 29, 1692) was a French author, scientist, traveler, cartographer, orientalist, inventor, and diplomat. He was the inventor of the spirit level and is also famous for his popular 1696 book The Art of Swimming, one of the first books on the subject and widely read during the eighteenth century (Benjamin Franklin, an avid swimmer in his youth, is known to have read it). The book popularized the breaststroke (see History of swimming). He also influenced the founding of the Académie Royale des Sciences (the French Academy of Sciences). He died at Issy.

Thévenot was an amateur scientist and patron of many scientists and mathematicians, maintaining correspondence with figures like Jan Swammerdam, whom he encouraged to tackle the origin of organisms. He was wealthy and well-connected, in 1684 becoming the Royal Librarian to King Louis XIV of France. He also served as ambassador to Genoa in 1647 and then to Rome in the 1650s. After the death of Pope Innocent X, he participated in the subsequent conclave.

Thévenot came from a family of royal office holders (nobles of the robe), which partly explains his wealth. He was reputed to speak English, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and several oriental languages, including Arabic and Turkish. The Newton scholar R. S. Westfall opined in his unpublished notes that Thévenot may have been of Jewish origin, "due to the mystery of his origins, his knowledge of Hebrew, and his first name", the French rendering of Melchizedek.[1] This speculation is disproved by the fact that Thévenot's baptismal name was Nicolas, Melchisédech being added as the second (confirmation) name, almost certainly in honour of his maternal grandfather, Melchisédech Garnier (d. 1637), an "avocat" at the Parlement of Paris, and probably a Huguenot (given the Old Testament name).

[edit] Scientific Studies

Thévenot studied astronomy, physics, medicine, and magnetism, and demonstrated in the 1660s the possibility that atmospheric pulsations had something to do with human and animal respiration. Between 1658 and 1661 Thévenot conducted experiments on capillarity and the siphon. He proposed the use of lemon juice as a cure for various maladies, as well as ipecac as a remedy for dysentery.

Thévenot invented the spirit level (or bubble level) some time before February 2, 1661, which he filled with alcohol and mounted on a stone ruler fitted with a viewing lens. This date can be very accurately established from Thevenot's correspondence with scientist Christian Huygens. Within a year of this date the inventor circulated details of his invention to others, including Robert Hooke in London and Vincenzo Viviani in Florence. It is occasionally argued that these bubble levels did not come into widespread use until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the earliest surviving examples being from that time, but Adrien Auzout had recommended that the Académie Royale des Sciences take "levels of the Thévenot type" on its expedition to Madagascar in 1666. It is very likely that these levels were in use in France and elsewhere long before the turn of the century.

[edit] Other works

Many of Thévenot's maps of the Middle East were published in his Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux (Paris, 1663), a collection of translations of voyages of discovery (such as that of Cosmas Indicopleustes). One of these was one of the earliest and most detailed depiction of southern Iraq (his nephew Jean de Thévenot later visited this region). Thévenot makes reference to the Mandaeans of the Basra region, and includes a printed page from one of this sect’s holy books, one of the first printed appearances of the Mandaean language in Europe.[2]

Thevenot is often confused with his nephew, the traveler Jean de Thévenot. There is evidence to suggest that both Huygens and Hooke later laid claim to the invention of the spirit level, although only within their own countries. There is no surviving portrait of Thévenot, and an alleged portrait of him (such as can be seen in Gerrit Lindeboom’s edition of Thévenot’s letters to Swammerdam) is actually of his nephew Jean.

[edit] Sources

• Robert A. Hatch, The Scientific Revolution, Westfall Catalogue, Scientific Community (contains bibliography of sources on Thévenot)

Nicholas Dew. Reading travels in the culture of curiosity: Thévenot's collection of voyages. Journal of Early Modern History 10, no. 1-2 (2006): 39-59.[3]

Camus, Armand-Gaston. Mémoire sur la Collection des grands et petits voyages [des de Bry] et sur la collection des voyages de Melchisedech Thévenot. (Paris: Baudouin, 1802).

McClaughlin, Trevor. Sur les rapports entre la Compagnie de Thévenot et l'Académie royale des Sciences. Revue d'histoire des sciences 28 (1975): 235-242.

Turner, Anthony J. Melchisédech Thévenot, the bubble level, and the artificial horizon. Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza 7, no. 1 (1992): 131-145.