Jacques Aleaume

Jacques Aleaume , also Alleaume, (* 1562 in Orléans , † 1627 in Paris ) was a French mathematician, engineer, cryptologist and architect.

Aleaume was a Huguenot. His father Pierre Aleaume was Francois Viète's secretary and Jacques Aleaume was a pupil of Viète. He also had contact with Marin Getaldić through the Venetian Paolo Sarpi , with whom he was in correspondence from 1600 . Jacques Aleaume became an engineer in the army of Moritz of Orange in 1605 . There were Simon Stevin , Samuel Marolois (1527-1627) and David van Orliens his colleagues (was there later also Albert Girard ). Moritz von Orange gathered mathematicians and engineers around him and they also taught, for example, fortress construction and siege technology. When he was hired, he must have had a good reputation because he received the same pay as the other engineers (50 guilders per month). From 1607 he was employed there as chief cryptologist by Moritz von Oranien (a skill with which his teacher Francois Viète excelled), which increased his salary considerably. He was also known as a cartographer. During the armistice in the Eighty Years War between Habsburg and the Netherlands, he was in Paris from 1608/09, where Henry IV assigned him an apartment in the Louvre and he tried his hand at an architect (with Claude Chastillon for a design for the redevelopment of the Place de France in Paris on behalf of the king) and later in fortress construction. In the end he received pensions from the Netherlands and France (in 1626 he was listed as a mineral water concessionaire). He often lived in Paris, where he was known for his various scientific instruments (he even had a device built for making mirrors and lenses for astronomical purposes). In 1627 he was in Lyon, but died soon after in Paris. He was buried in Charenton on October 3, 1627 . His books and instruments were sold. In his estate were Viète's writings and his own manuscripts (fortress construction, manufacture of lenses and mirrors, perspective, etc.).

Through his father he came across the posthumous manuscripts of Viète administered by him and was one of those who made them available to Alexander Anderson .

He was an admirer of Galileo Galilei . He found out about Galileo's telescope through Sarpi in 1610 and had one built himself. When the King of France asked him in 1618 to use it to observe the comet more closely, he referred him to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (the sovereign Galileo) because his telescope was not good enough. In 1610 he was one of those who came into the selection of Galileo's successors in Padua.

When he died, he left a manuscript on perspective that the printers and publishers Pierre Rocolet and Charles Hulpeau wanted to buy and print (Introduction à la perspective, ensemble a l'usage du compas optique et perspective). In 1628 they received a royal permit for this and it is also proven that the printing took place, but due to the death of Hulpeau the printing could not be completed. In 1641 the mathematician Etienne Migon got the manuscript and revised it thoroughly. It was published in 1643 under the title La perspective speculative et pratique . There are no more copies of the first print today (Migon bought up all the remaining copies and promised to deliver them free to the buyers of his revised book). It is therefore no longer possible today to distinguish between the contributions by Migon and Aleaume. There are some novel perspective constructions (direct perspective constructions of horizontal and vertical lines and angles) in the book. But her influence was little after Kirsti Anderson.

He also translated Heinrich Rantzau's treatise on astrology into French.

literature

• Kirsti Andersen , The geometry of an art, Springer 2007 (section The work of Aleaume and Migon , from p. 418)
• Entry Aleaune (Jacques) in: Dictionnaire de biographie francaise, Paris 1933, volume 1
• Entry in Charles Bauchal (ed.), Nouveau dictionnaire biographique et critique des architectes francaises, Paris 1887
• De Waard, entry Alleaume, Jacques, in: Blok, Molhuysen, Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 1912, online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1000 guilders per year and more. His name was written Jacques a l'Haulme in the Netherlands.
2. ↑ The development was only partially realized, but there is a plan by Chastillon from 1609, for example reprinted in Anthony Blunt , Richard Beresford, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700, Yale University Press 1999, p. 106. There Chastillon notes, that he and the engineer Aleaume are responsible for the design. The design was influential and envisaged a fan shape of the square.
3. ↑ Mario Biagoli, Galileo, Courtier , University of Chicago Press 1993, p 58