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X-Sender: rgorrie@mailsrv.uoguelph.ca To: h-albion@h-net.msu.edu Cc: John Saillant <john.saillant@wmich.edu> Original-recipient: rfc822;saillant@vmh.cc.wmich.edu Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 18:22:33 +0000 (GMT) From: Anne Goldgar <anne.goldgar@kcl.ac.uk> Jean-Theophile Desaguliers (1683-1744) was the son of a Huguenot refugee to England who became a fairly well-known Newtonian natural philosopher, as well as being an Anglican minister and an important freemason. He was made FRS in 1714 and was responsible for a number of practical scientific projects, including the invention of the planetarium. He was multilingual, but I don't know if he knew Arabic or not. I'm slightly confused by the reference to Cambridge, as he was more connected to Oxford, where he lectured in natural philosophy. However, I have no access to any reference books at present. I would recommend the DNB and possibly La France Protestante, the 19th-century multivolume historical dictionary of Huguenots. I'm not sure about manuscripts of Desaguliers elsewhere in Britain (you might check the National Register of Archives website), but there's quite a bit in the British Library (see the manuscripts catalogue at http://molcat.bl.uk). Anne Goldgar King's College London
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