Marin Cureau de la Chambre
Encyclopedia
Saint-Jean-d'Assé
Saint-Jean-d'Assé is a commune in the Sarthe department in the region of Pays-de-la-Loire in north-western France.-References:*...
, a village near Le Mans
Le Mans
Le Mans is a city in France, located on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans. Le Mans is a part of the Pays de la Loire region.Its inhabitants are called Manceaux...
. Details of his youth and where he attended school are unknown. He was initially a physician in Le Mans
Le Mans
Le Mans is a city in France, located on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans. Le Mans is a part of the Pays de la Loire region.Its inhabitants are called Manceaux...
, and around 1630 moved to 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...
, where he became a friend and physician to Pierre Séguier
Pierre Séguier
-Early years:Born in Paris, France of a prominent legal family originating in Quercy. His grandfather, Pierre Séguier , was président à mortier in the parlement of Paris from 1554 to 1576, and the chancellor's father, Jean Séguier, a seigneur d'Autry, was civil lieutenant of Paris at the time of...
(1588–1672). Afterwards, he was a médecin ordinaire to Louis XIV. Reportedly the monarch was impressed by Cureau de la Chambre's ability to judge human character based on physical appearance.
Marin Cureau de la Chambre is largely known for his work in physiognomy
Physiognomy
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
. Between 1640 and 1662 he published a five-volume study on mans' character and "passions" called Caractères des passions. He wrote articles on many other topics, including palmistry, digestion
Digestion
Digestion is the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food into smaller components that are more easily absorbed into a blood stream, for instance. Digestion is a form of catabolism: a breakdown of large food molecules to smaller ones....
, "reasoning" in animals, occult practices and optics
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
. On the latter subject he investigates the nature of light and color, refraction
Refraction
Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. It is essentially a surface phenomenon . The phenomenon is mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy. The proper explanation would be that due to change of medium, the phase velocity of the wave is changed...
s, and the possibility of primary and secondary colors. He also wrote books on philosophy, and published a translation of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Physica.
In 1634 he became an early member of the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
, and in 1666 was an original member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was also the father of clergyman Pierre Cureau de la Chambre (1640–1693).
He died in Paris.
In 1991 astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
Eric Walter Elst
Eric Walter Elst
Eric Walter Elst is a Belgian astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, with over 3,000 discovered so far ....
named the asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
7126 Cureau
7126 Cureau
7126 Cureau is a main-belt asteroid discovered on April 8, 1991 by Eric Walter Elst at La Silla.- External links :...
after Marin Cureau de la Chambre.