Pierre de Maricourt , called Pierre the Pilgrim, ( Petrus Peregrinus ) is a scientist of the Moyen-âge.

Under the name of Magister Petrus de Maharncuria, Picardus , it is quoted by its disciple Roger Bacon in his Opus Maius as an only author of its time which had an exact knowledge of the prospect. According to Bacon, it came from Picardy, the village of Maricourt, close to Péronne, in the current department of the Somme. Recluse who devoted to the study Nature, metallurgist, it created a model of armor for Louis IX and his army.

The only detail of its life is that it was with the service, perhaps as an engineer, of Charles {{Ier}} of Sicily and that it was present at the head office of Lucera, in 1269. The nickname of “pilgrim” lets suppose that it took part in the Crusade .

It left a remarkable treaty on the magnet, Epistola $petri Peregrini de Maricourt AD Sygerum de Foucaucourt, militem, of magnete ( Lettre of Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt with Sygerus de Foucaucourt, soldier, about the magnet ).

The Epistola of magnete is divided into two parts:

• the first, a model of inductive reasoning based on definite and correctly interpreted experiments, determined the fundamental laws of magnetism. Its essential contribution is not the discovery of these laws but their presentation in a logical order. It improves the principle of the compass known in Occident since the 12th century and described the compass.

• the second is weaker. It is a question of an attempt at exposed on the alleged capacity of the magnets to carry out the Perpetual motion.

With the Middle Ages, the concern to find the key of the perpetual motion is large. In 1326, Thomas Bradwardine quotes Pierre de Maricourt in his Tractatus of proportionibus and the doctors of the Université of Oxford frequently uses its Epistola of magnete . The manuscripts the container are very numerous, and it was printed a certain number of times. The first edition was published in Augsburg, in 1558, by Achilles Gasser. In 1572, Jean Taisnier plagiarizes it in its Opus matematica . William Gilbert recognized his debt towards Pierre de Maricourt and incorporated the experiments of this scientist of XIIIe century on magnetism in its own treaty, called De Magnete .

The Epistola of magnete was published by Guillaume Libri, but this edition was full with errors. Correct editions were published by P.D. Timoteo Bertelli and G. Hellmann. A translation in English was made by Silvanus P. Thompson and Brother Arnold in 1904

See too

Related articles

External bonds and documents

• Biographical note of Pierre de Maricourt on the site of Institution off Engineering and Technology .
• Letter off Petrus Peregrinus one the magnet, translation and introduction by Brothers Arnold and Potamian, New York, McGraw publishing company, 1904.

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