Nicolas François Rémond

Nicolas-François Rémond (* 1638 ; † 1725 ) was the first councilor of the Duke of Orléans and brother of the mathematician Pierre Rémond de Montmort .

Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon describes Nicolas-François Rémond as not outwardly of a beautiful figure, but as extremely well-educated and of great social skill, to which his happy marriage to the daughter of a jeweler also contributed. His special interests were mathematics, politics, philosophy, literature and poetry.

From 1713 until his death in 1716 Rémond maintained a lively correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , to whom we owe essential knowledge about monadology and Leibniz's work on Chinese cosmology, natural philosophy and religiosity. The latter results from an unfinished letter to Rémond: “Discours sur la theologie naturelle des Chinois”.

In addition, Rémond was an important link with England in the priority dispute over differential calculus for Leibniz . Mary Wortley Montagu describes in her memoirs a visit by Remond to London in 1720.

literature

• R. Widmaier (Ed.), Leibniz corresponds with China . Frankfurt am Main 1990;
• Wenchao Li: The Christian China Mission in the 17th Century . (Studia Leibnitiana. Supplementa. 32.) Stuttgart 2000.
• Neil Jeffares: Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 . Unicorn Press 2000.
• Saint-Simon: Mémoires . 1719
• Macelo Dascal: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Art of Controversises (pp. 445–449), Springer 2008
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment . Oxford University Press 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-818765-3 .