François Peyrard

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François Peyrard (born October 29, 1759 in Vial in Saint-Victor-Malescours , Haute-Loire department , † October 3, 1822 in Paris ) was a French scholar, librarian and translator.

Life

He is best known for discovering a Greek manuscript of the Elements of Euclid in manuscripts confiscated from Napoleon in the Vatican library, which allowed the Greek text to be reconstructed without the edits of Theon of Alexandria . On the manuscript he found (Vaticanus graecus 190) was based his own translation into French, published by Peyraud in Paris in 1804, with the assistance of Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre , who checked the translation and compared it with the original. However, Peyrard used the text (and other manuscripts) to correct the Basel edition (1533). A critical edition from scratch was created by Heiberg . In addition to the elements, he also published the data in the edition from 1814 to 1818.

Peyrard went to school in Monistrol-sur-Loire and Puy-en-Velay . After his parents died, he went to the French Guards to avoid the priestly career his relatives had intended for him and continued his studies there. In 1785 he left the Gardes françaises, taught as a private tutor and married in 1787. After teaching mathematics (geometry) for free in 1786, he joined efforts to promote popular education during the French Revolution and in 1793 was a member of a commission of the Convention for the Reform of the Educational System, which on September 15, 1793 submitted her proposals to the Convention. It also included the mathematicians Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Gaspard Monge and Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde , as well as the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet . They advocated the establishment of a few central universities and the preservation of the Collège de France . In addition, he inspected cannons and other weapons for the French army with Berthollet and accompanied the envoy of the convent Lemoine as its secretary in various central French departments to inspect coal and arms production. On his return in 1795 he became librarian, secretary of the board of directors and editor of the journal of the École polytechnique . He expanded the library from 564 to over 10,000 volumes by the end of his tenure in 1804. At the Ecole Polytechnique he was involved in a heated argument with his superior Lermina, about which he complained to the ministry because he saw himself as a victim of intrigue. A deeper reason was that this Peyrard halved the salary of a professor (and doubled his own). This and other disputes in which Peyrard was involved at the Ecole Polytechnique and which disturbed the working atmosphere, as well as neglect of his official duties (he was heavily involved in his translation work) led to his dismissal from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1804. In 1806 (possibly not until 1810) he became a professor at the Lycée Bonaparte .

His translation of the elements appeared in 1804 and was officially recommended as a school book by the ministry. A detailed edition based on the manuscript he discovered with the Greek text was published from 1814 to 1818. He also translated Archimedes (with commentary). He also translated the poems of Horace and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim . In 1793/94 he published a philosophical essay De la Nature et de ses Lois , in which he campaigned for the construction of the Suez Canal . A translation of the conic sections by Apollonios von Perge (manuscript in the estate) remained unprinted.

Fonts

  • De la nature et de ses lois, Paris 1793/94
  • Précis historique des principales descentes qui ont été faites dans la Grande-Bretagne depuis Jules César jusqu'à l'an V de la République, Paris, 1798
  • Poésies complètes d'Horace, Paris, 1803
  • C. Agrippa: De la supériorité de la femme au-dessus de l'homme, Paris 1801
  • Traité de l'incertitude des sciences de C. Agrippa, Paris, 1803
  • Eléments de géométrie d'Euclide, Paris: F. Louis 1804, Gallica
  • Les Oeuvres d'Euclide, Paris 1814-1818 (in Greek, Latin and French)
  • Oeuvres d´Archimede, Paris: F. Buisson 1807, Archives

In 1798 and afterwards he reissued the Cours de mathématiques de Bézout .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sometimes it is also given around 1760. See the article by Janis Langins in the web links, quoting Rochas d`Aiglun Notice historique sur la bibliothèque de l'Ecole polytechnique , Paris 1894
  2. ↑ They were returned in 1814
  3. ↑ Comments on the various editions in Thomas Heath The thirteen books of Euclid's elements Cambridge University Press 1908, Volume 1, p. 103
  4. ↑ Many biographical details are known from a defense document that he wrote around this time
  5. ↑ After Michaud in Biographie Universelle 1806, after Jean Itard 1810
personal data
SURNAME Peyrard, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French translator, librarian and scholar
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Victor-Malescours
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1822
Place of death Paris