Blaise de Vigenère was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 diplomat

Diplomat

A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...

 and cryptographer. The Vigenère cipher

Vigenère cipher

The Vigenère cipher is a method of encrypting alphabetic text by using a series of different Caesar ciphers based on the letters of a keyword. It is a simple form of polyalphabetic substitution....

 is so named due to the cipher being incorrectly attributed to him in the 19th century.

Vigenère (viʒnɛːʁ) was born in the village of Saint-Pourçain

Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule

Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule is a commune in the Allier department in central France.-Geography:The commune is located north of Vichy and south of Moulins on the Route nationale 9....

. At age 17 he entered the diplomatic service, and remained there for 30 years, retiring in 1570. Five years into his career he was sent to the Diet of Worms

Diet of Worms

The Diet of Worms 1521 was a diet that took place in Worms, Germany, and is most memorable for the Edict of Worms , which addressed Martin Luther and the effects of the Protestant Reformation.It was conducted from 28 January to 25 May 1521, with Emperor Charles V presiding.Other Imperial diets at...

 as a very junior secretary. At age 24, he entered the service of the Duke of Nevers

Nevers

Nevers is a commune in – and the administrative capital of – the Nièvre department in the Bourgogne region in central France...

. In 1549 he visited Rome on a two-year diplomatic mission, and again in 1566. On both trips, he came in contact both with books on cryptography and cryptologists themselves. When Vigenère retired aged 47, he donated his 1,000 livres a year income to the poor in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. He married a Marie Varé.

In his retirement, he was author of over twenty books including,

• Traicté de Cometes
• Le psaultier de David torne en prose mesuree, ou vers libres, a translation of the Psalms
• Traicté des Chiffres ou Secrètes Manières d'Escrire (1586)
• Traicté du Feu et du Sel (1608)

In Traicté des Chiffres he described an autokey cipher

Autokey cipher

An autokey cipher is a cipher which incorporates the message into the key. There are two forms of autokey cipher: key autokey and text autokey ciphers. A key-autokey cipher uses previous members of the keystream to determine the next element in the keystream...

 he had invented, it was the first cipher of this type after Bellaso not to be trivially breakable.

He had a considerable interest in alchemy

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

and this was the subject of Traicté du Feu et du Sel (A Discourse of Fire and Salt).

Vigenère died of throat cancer in 1596.