Claude Perrault

Claude Perrault (1613 to 1688) was a French physician and amateur architect, best known for his part in the design of the east facade of the Louvre in Paris. He was also an anatomist and author who wrote treatises on architecture, physics and natural history, and his brother Charles Perrault is remembered as the reteller of Cinderella. Born and died in Paris, he took a medical degree at the University of Paris in 1642 and became one of the first members of the French Academy of Sciences when it was founded in 1666. A committee of Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun and Perrault, appointed by Louis XIV, designed the Louvre facade, begun in 1667 and essentially complete in 1674, and its definitive design is attributed to him. He also designed the Paris Observatory, built between 1667 and 1669 as a research institute of the Academy of Sciences, and a triumphal arch on Rue Saint-Antoine in which he devised interlocking stones that bound into a single mass without mortar. His translation of Vitruvius into French made him well known as well.