Exactly to the day before 50 years ago the Huguenot son Jean-Philippe Baratier was born in Schwabach. He was the first “child prodigy” of the Enlightenment. He was able to read at the age of three, and at the age of six he argued in German, French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic were added later. Until his 11. He was occupied with the exegesis of biblical questions, after which he devoted himself to mathematics and astronomy. On the way from Schwabach to Berlin, Baratier was examined at the University of Halle and promptly received the Magister Artium.

In this section we always present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and of course mathematics on Tuesdays.

In Berlin he was born at the age of 14 years ago he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Sciences and sent back to Halle to study law with well-paid funding, where he had the royal privilege to borrow or buy all books can that he wanted. There he died at the age of 17 of a cancerous tumor. He left 10 printed treatises and on 50 Drafts for comprehensively planned works, from theology to a Greek grammar to Egyptology, which his biographer Jean Henri Samuel Formey tried to organize.

Letters instead of marbles Grown up in the house of a Huguenot pastor’s family, visited Jean Phlippe Baratier never had a school, but was taught exclusively by his father. Instead of playing with marbles, his father gave him colored letters in his early childhood, later books covered with pictures and taught him Latin in addition to his native French. With every advance in knowledge his father encouraged him to write little treatises. He also opened the door in the morning for correspondence with Huguenot scholars all over Europe. This network followed the progress of the child prodigy with interest and encouragement. His first work was the translation of a Hebrew travelogue, his best known was the 1735 published Anti-Artemonius based on the Gospel of John: Here sat down Baratier diverged with the ideas of the theologian Samuel Crell (pseudonym Artemonius), a follower of socianism.

In the year 1734 The study of a globe “suddenly” awakened his interest in astronomy and mathematics, as described in Formey’s biography. Baratier was engaged in the construction of astronomical measuring instruments, tried to calculate the lunar orbit and was quickly familiar with the most famous scientific problem of his time, the 1714 Length problem advertised by the British Royal Society. He sent his solution on 10. December 1737 in Latin to the Royal Society and in French to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. His suggestion was to use the moon in connection with a fixed star for the calculation of the longitude.

For this he wanted to have extensive ephemeris tables developed or to use those that are available at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich from ” Computers “, that is, people who converted the angles measured by the royal astronomer Flamsteed. Without knowing it, Baratier took up a suggestion from Galileo Galilei with the use of fixed stars as global marker points, who wanted to use the exact orbits of the regularly appearing moons of Jupiter. Galileo’s proposal was impractical because fixed stars could not be measured with sufficient accuracy on swaying ships with the telescopes of the time.

Proposal rejected The same thing happened to Baratier’s proposal, which was assessed by an experienced navigator and an astronomer and was published on 26. January 1738 was discussed by the Royal Society. “But as the ingenious Youth seems not to have a clear notion of the motion of a ship at sea, as it is really, nor is well aquainted with the late instruments used for measuring distances and taking altitudes at sea, it is needless to give any further account of what he offers on his head, “so the sobering conclusion of the reviewers. The letter of rejection sent to Baratier was much more friendly, praised the approach and pointed to his youth.

Anyone with 17 Years have come so far, will surely find solutions to many great problems, if he continues to study nature diligently, Baratier is encouraged. Of course, he was more attached to the books from which he drew his conclusions. The wish of the examiners of the Royal Society was not to be fulfilled. Since his 10 year of life, Baratier has been plagued with a “bad finger” that repeatedly had to be operated on. It is telling that, according to his biographer Formey, the child’s universal genius hated two things: music and medicine. He died on October 5th 1740 in Halle.

For 300. For his birthday, various lectures are planned in his hometown Schwabach throughout the year, which are summarized in this leaflet. A lane is renamed Baratier-Weg, a monument to the reading Baratier is erected in front of the French church and the fate of the Huguenots is commemorated. When Baratier was born in Schwabach 300 years ago, the city 3000 residents, of whom 500 were of French origin. Baratier’s biographer Formey pushed through French to replace Latin as the scientific language at the Prussian Royal Academy.

(mho)