Claude Mylon

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Claude Mylon (* 1618 in Paris ; † 1660 ibid) was a French lawyer who played a role as a contact person and correspondent for mathematicians in Paris in the 1650s.

Mylon came from a prominent family, his father Benoist Mylon was the general controller of finances and adviser to Louis XIII. He himself was admitted to the Paris Parliament in 1641, which was unusual as it was two years before he came of legal age.

He was also an amateur mathematician, but played a role in the history of mathematics not through his own achievements, but as an intermediary between mathematicians in Paris and outside of it. From around 1645 he was a member of the circle around Marin Mersenne and recorded their mathematical discussions there. After the death of Mersenne in 1648 Jacques Le Pailleur took over the leadership of the mathematicians who had met at Mersenne in a kind of academy, and Mylon was the secretary of the group (called Académie Parisienne) and after the death of Le Pailleur in 1654 he made the in the correspondence and the notes of the group contained mathematical discoveries, for example by Pierre de Fermat and Frenicle de Bessy on number theory and Blaise Pascal and Fermat on probability theory known to other mathematicians, especially in the Netherlands. He corresponded with Frans van Schooten (about the results of Pascal and Fermat in probability theory, which also came to Christian Huygens ) and Gilles Personne de Roberval and had contacts with Blaise Pascal (even after his turning away from mathematics) and Florimond de Beaune .

Huygens visited him in 1655 on his first trip to Paris and also Frans van Schooten on a visit to Paris.

According to Costabel, his own mathematical experiments only show his inadequacy as a mathematician, for example when he tried to prove a result by Christopher Wren about the arc length of the cycloid in 1659 - Huygens then no longer mentioned him in his writings after Pierre Costabel (although he also died shortly afterwards ).

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SURNAME Mylon, Claude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 1618
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 1660
Place of death Paris