Jacques Besson

Jacques Besson was a French Protestant inventor, mathematician and philosopher, born around 1540 and dead in 1573. He is chiefly remembered for the Theatrum Instrumentorum, a treatise on machines published in 1571 or 1572 that gathered his own new inventions, with detailed illustrations engraved by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau to his specifications. In the early 1550s he is recorded teaching mathematics in Paris, and Geneva granted him citizenship for his services in teaching mathematics. In 1567 he published Le Cosmolabe, which described an instrument based on the astrolabe for navigation, surveying, cartography and astronomy. In 1569 he became master of the King's Engines to Charles IX of France, and after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 he emigrated to England, where he died.