Claude Mylon

Claude Mylon was a French lawyer and mathematician, born in Paris in 1618, the third son of Benoist Mylon, a counsellor to Louis XIII and Controller-General of Finance. He was admitted to the bar as an advocate before the Parlement in 1641. His importance in the history of mathematics lies not in results of his own but in his role in the Académie Parisienne, the circle that continued Mersenne's group and led to the Paris Academy of Sciences. He joined Mersenne's circle around 1645, became secretary of the academy, and after 1654 kept the correspondence of its members, passing Fermat's and Frenicle de Bessy's number theory problems to Holland and writing to van Schooten, Pascal and Roberval about games of chance. His own attempts, on the area of the Pearls of Sluze and on Wren's result for the arc length of the cycloid, were unsuccessful. He died in Paris in 1660.