Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt

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Dry compass with freely rotating magnetic needle. Copy of the Epistola de magnetse from the 14th century
Title page of De magnete

Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt (French Pierre Pèlerin de Maricourt , German Peter the Pilgrim of Maricourt ) was a French scholar of the 13th century. He experimented with magnets and was the first to describe their polarity in his treatise Epistola de magnete in 1269 .

The Epistola was the first work ever to contain a detailed study of swinging compass needles , which are a fundamental component of the dry compass and which were to appear a short time later in medieval seafaring (around 1300). It is believed that the Epistole dates back to magnetic experiments that Peter had already carried out two decades earlier. This can be inferred from remarks in several works by Peter’s student Roger Bacon that had appeared in the meantime.

However, Peter has not yet described the use of a swinging magnetic needle in conjunction with a compass rose , so that there is a certain tendency in the specialist literature to ascribe the invention of the dry compass to the Italian seaside town of Amalfi , where, according to medieval tradition, the individual components of the dry compass were first changed 1300 were assembled into a whole, namely a freely rotating needle in a glass box with a compass rose.

The Peregrinus Peak in Antarctica is named after him.

expenditure

  • Loris Sturlese, Ron B. Thomson (Ed.): Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt: Opera. Epistula de magnets. Nova compositio astrolabii particularis. Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1995, ISBN 88-7642-049-5 (critical edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ EGR Taylor: The South-Pointing Needle . In: Imago Mundi , Vol. 8. (1951), pp. 1-7; Barbara M. Kreutz: Mediterranean Contributions to the Medieval Mariner's Compass . In: Technology and Culture , Vol. 14, No. 3. (Jul., 1973), p. 371; Frederic C. Lane: The Economic Meaning of the Invention of the Compass . In: The American Historical Review , Vol. 68, No. 3, 1963, pp. 615f.
  2. ↑ These books were De Secretis operibis Naturae et Artis , Opus majus and Opus Minus . EGR Taylor: The South-Pointing Needle . In: Imago Mundi , Vol. 8, 1951, pp. 1f., 4.
  3. ^ Frederic C. Lane: The Economic Meaning of the Invention of the Compass . In: The American Historical Review , Vol. 68, No. 3, 1963, pp. 615f.
personal data
SURNAME Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pierre Pèlerin de Maricourt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist
DATE OF BIRTH before 1269
DATE OF DEATH after 1269