Denis Papin

Denis Papin was a French Huguenot physicist, mathematician and inventor, born at Chitenay in the Loir-et-Cher on 22 August 1647 and dead on 26 August 1713, best known for the steam digester, a forerunner of the pressure cooker. He took a medical degree at Angers in 1669, worked with Christiaan Huygens in Paris in 1673 and then moved to London, where he worked with Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679 and joined the staff of the Royal Society in 1684. After the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685 he could not return to France, and from about 1687 to 1707 he was professor of mathematics at the University of Marburg. In 1690 he built a model of a piston steam engine, and in 1705 he developed a steam pressure engine with Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery. He also suggested a force pump for fresh air in a diving bell, and he died poor, his grave long lost.