Jacques Rohault

Jacques Rohault (* 1618 in Amiens, † December 27, 1672 in Paris) was a French physicist and mathematician. He was one of the main representatives of Cartesianism in Paris and wrote in this spirit in his time and to spread in the early 18th century physics textbook.

Rohault was the son of a wealthy wine merchant and studied in Paris under the Jesuits. Geometry he taught himself through self-study and began teaching mathematics in Paris. Among his students were among the Cartesians Claude Pierre Sylvain Régis and Clerselier and the Dauphin, he taught mathematics and philosophy on teaching of Bossuet.

He was a member of the Academy of Henri Louis Habert de Montmor.

In 1656 he repeated the barometric experiments of Blaise Pascal in front of a large audience in Notre Dame. The following year he began a week on Wednesday to show off with great success publicly Physical experiments.

In his physics textbook by 1671 he treated alongside material from the dioptrics and Météores of Descartes and new topics such as magnetism and capillarity and places great emphasis on experimentation. In astronomy he partly follows the traditional theories of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, Copernicus partially. It also deals with biology (where he follows Descartes also next to William Harvey and his theory of the circulatory system ).

He was married twice.

Writings

• Traite de Physique, Paris in 1671, many new editions to 1730 A Latin translation appeared in 1674 in Geneva and 1702 in London