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Nom
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Hartsoeker Nicolas
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Date de naissance
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25 March 1656
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Date de mort
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10 December 1725
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Lieu de naissance
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Gouda (NL)
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Lieu de mort
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Utrecht
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Couverture temporelle
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4/4 17th century
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Biographie
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An optical instrument-maker and associé étranger of the Académie des Science (14 February 1699), Hartsoeker was born at Gouda, son of the Remonstrant and Arminian priest Christiaan Hartsoeker (1626-83) and Anna van der Mey. In 1684 he fled the Low Countries being unable to honour a note of some 200,000 livres. A protestant of Arminian sympathies, in 1685 he converted to Catholicism in order to remain in France. Established at Passy, he and his wife Susanne (?) rapidly acquired a high reputation for their optical instruments, in particular microscopes with spherical lenses. Inspector of the Royal Glassworks at Cherbourg from 1684-96, Hartsoeker also made instruments to equip expeditions by Jesuit missionaries and supplied lenses to the Paris observatory. On 15 February 1688 for example he was paid 3196 livres 10 sous for thirty three large telescope lenses, a triple lens microscope, two burning mirrors, a thermometer, a barometer and a telescope. Twenty of the lenses had been delivered to the Observatory, the rest to the Jesuit Barnabé, about to leave for China.1 Ambitious of a higher intellectual status than that of a simple artisan, perhaps hoping to be elected to the Académie des Sciences, Hartsoeker launched himself in the composition of theoretical works of natural philosophy though without great success. In 1692 he undertook an espionage mission in the Low Countries for the French government,2 but in 1696 he left France for reasons which remain unknown, settling in Dusseldorf. The following year he gave instruction in mathematics and physics to Peter the Great during his stay in Amsterdam and was subsequently mathematician to the Elector Palatine and Professeur of Mathematics at Heidelberg where he devoted considerble time to the making of large burning mirrors. He died at Utrecht whence he had moved in 1710. Fontenai claimed that a telescope of 600 feet focus that he had devised and a large burning mirror were still admired at the time that he wrote, and described Hartsoeker as 'lively, bright and officious, of a good-nature and easiness which false friends often abused', Savérien however added that he was gloomy and caustic, explaining that this originally arose from pique at the criticisms levelled at his ideas in physics and hardened as he grew older.3
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Notes biographiques
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1 GuiffreyIII, 124.' au Sr Hartsoeker ingénieur Holandais' for '33 grands verres de lunettes, un grand microscope à trois verres, deux miroirs ardans, un termomettre, un baromettre et une lunette d'aproche toute monté de ses verres, dont il a fourni à l'observatoire vingt des susd. verres, le reste au P. Barnabé missionaire jésuite allant à la Chine'.
2 For details of this mission and a discussion of Hartsoeker's motivations see Stroup.
3 Fontenai i, 692-3. Savérien vi, 130. A brief summary of Hartsoeker's life is also given by Rooseboom.
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Bibliographie
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Principes de physique, Paris 1696
'Des élémns des corps naturels & des qualités qu'ils doivent avoir, pour servir de réponse aux objections que M; Lamontre a faites dans le Journal du 16 avril dernier contre les principes de M. Hartsoeker', Journal des Sçavants , juillet 1696 et Histoire des ouvrages des sçavants octobre 1696.
'Difficultés proposées à M. Lamontre sur l'explication qu'il a donnée de la variation de l'aiguille', Nouvelles de la Réublique de Lettres, octobre 1696.
Eclaircissemens sur les conjectures physiques, Paris 1710
Recueil des différentes pièces de Physique, 1722
Dissertation sur les passions de l'âme
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Identifiant
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2206
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ark:/18469/1t0p4