Born diocese of Bayeux, (Calvados), France, circa1320
Died Lisieux, (Calvados), France, 11 July 1382
French bishop, scholastic philosopher, economist, and mathematician Nicole Oresme is considered today as one of the principal forerunners of modern science. Oresme’s contributions in mathematics and physics are considered decisive ideas for the development of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Editions of Oresme’s work were published well into the Renaissance.
Probably Oresme took his philosophical training at the University of Paris under John Buridan , whose influence in Oresme’s works is evident. By 1348 he had a scholarship in theology at the college of Navarre at Paris, of which he became grand master (head) in 1356. Oresme left Navarre after his appointment as a canon at Rouen (1362). Later he was appointed Canon at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1363) and Dean of the Cathedral of Rouen (1364). At the behest of King Charles V of France, from about 1370...
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Selected References
Clagett, Marshall (1959). The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (Reprint, 1979.)
— (1974). “Oresme, Nicole.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 10, pp. 223-230. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
— (ed.) (1968). Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions: A Treatise on the Uniformity and Difformity of Intensities Known as Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Duhem, Pierre (1954, 1958). Le système du monde. Vols. 7 and 8. Paris: A. Hermann.
— (1909). Un précurseur français de Copernic: Nicole Oresme (1377). Paris.
Grant, Edward (1994). Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
— (ed.) (1966). Nicole Oresme, De proportionibus proportionum and Ad pauca respicientes. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
— (1971). Nicole Oresme and the Kinematics of Circular Motion: Tractatus de commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum celi. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Kirschner, Stefan (2000). “Oresme’s Concepts of Place, Space, and Time in His Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics.” Oriens-Occidens: Sciences, mathématiques et philosophie de l’Antiquité à l’Âge classique 3: 145-179.
Meunier, Francis (1857). Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicole Oresme. Paris.
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Dialetis, D. (2014). Oresme, Nicole. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1040
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