Joseph Sauveur

Joseph Sauveur (24 March 1653 – 9 July 1716) was a French mathematician and physicist. He was a professor of mathematics and in 1696 became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Joseph Sauveur was the son of a provincial notary. Despite a hearing and speech impairment that kept him totally mute until he was seven, Joseph — described as a "machinist since birth" — benefited from a fine education at the Jesuit College of La Flèche. At seventeen, his uncle agreed to finance his studies in philosophy and theology at Paris. Joseph, however, discovered Euclid and turned to anatomy and botany. He soon met Cordemoy, reader to the son of Louis XIV; and Cordemoy soon sang his praises to Bossuet, preceptor to the Dauphin. Despite his handicap, Joseph promptly began teaching mathematics to the Dauphine's pages and also to a number of princes, among them Eugene of Savoy. By 1680, he was something of a pet at court, where he gave anatomy courses to courtiers and calculated for them the odds in the game called "basset."

In 1681, Sauveur did the mathematical calculations for a waterworks project for the "Grand Condé's" estate at Chantilly, working with Edmé Mariotte, the "father of French hydraulics. Condé became very fond of Sauveur and severely reprimanded anyone who laughed at the mathematician's speech impediment. Condé would invite Saveur to stay at Chantilly. It was there that Sauveur did his work on hydrostatics.

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