Denis Papin

Denis Papin, who lived from 1647 to 1713, was a French Huguenot physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker. Born into a Calvinist family in Chitenay, he took a medical degree at the University of Angers in 1669, worked in Paris with Christiaan Huygens in 1673 and emigrated to London in 1675, where he worked with Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679 and in 1684 became a member of the staff of the Royal Society. In 1681 he became head of the experimental department of the accademia publica di scienze in Venice. As a Huguenot he was denied a return to France after the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685, and from 1687 to 1707 he held a position as professor of mathematics at the University of Marburg. In 1690 he built a model of a piston steam engine, the first of its kind, and in 1705 he developed a second engine with the help of Leibniz. The ship he built in 1705 was driven by hand-cranked paddles, not by steam as a later myth held. He returned to England for the last five years of his life and died a pauper, with the date of his death and his burial site lost for 303 years.