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boulliau - correspondence - calendar
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boulliau - correspondence - calendar
| Boulliau was a tireless correspondent. His letters tells us much about the world of learning in the crucial decades before the appearance of scientific journals, before the emergence of state- sponsored science. Boulliau corresponded with Galileo, Pierre Gassendi, Marin Mersenne, Henry Oldenburg, Christiaan Huygens, Prince Leopold, Stanislas Lubienietzki and hundreds of other notables including Mazarin, Colbert, and Marie-Louise de Gonzague, Queen of Poland. One of the major 'intelligencers' of the Scientific Revolution, Boulliau was also a pivotal figure in the Republic of Letters. His correspondence network rivals the combined efforts of Marin Mersenne (the 'Mailbox of Learned Europe) and Henry Oldenburg, the English 'clearing house' of science.' |
| A comprehensive calendar of Boulliau's complete correspondence represents the first step in identifying and locating his massive manuscript and epistolary remains. His extant corpus is slightly over 5,000 letters, though his original archive (at his death) appears to have been far richer. Among other archive treasures, Boulliau's original library included ten volumes of autograph letters sent to N-C Fabri Peiresc, a significant number of manuscripts of the philologist François Guyet, and hundreds of manuscripts of other contemporaries, among them the Brothers Dupuy. Finally, there are countless copies of historical and contemporary manuscripts, otherwise lost, of Tycho Brahe and other figures representing the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Boulliau left a rich legacy. |
| After several decades of effort a comprehensive Calendar of Boulliau's complete correspondence is near completion. If you wish to obtain information about his correspondence, or if you know of any hidden caches of Boulliau letters (for example, of some 2,000 letters, sent weekly, to Pierre Desnoyers between 1655-1692) please e-me. |
robert.a.hatch.feb.1998 et seq
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