Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, also spelled Faccio or Facio, was a Genevan mathematician, natural philosopher, astronomer, inventor and religious campaigner, born in Basel on 16 February 1664 and dying on 10 May 1753. He grew up mostly in the Republic of Geneva and spent much of his adult life in England and Holland. He is known for his collaboration with Giovanni Domenico Cassini on the explanation of zodiacal light, for his push or shadow theory of gravitation, for inventing the integrating factor as a method of solving ordinary differential equations, for his close association with Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton, and for his role in the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy. He also developed the first method of making jewel bearings for watches and clocks. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at twenty-four, he was drawn in 1706 into the millenarian sect called the French prophets and sentenced to the pillory the next year.