L'Autographe Auctions
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The Langer Collection
Lot 917:
SCIENCE AND MEDICINE - BUFFON Georges Louis LECLERC dit (1707 - 1788)
Description
A deputy member of the Académie des Sciences at the age of 26, he wrote the “Histoire naturelle” with a number of collaborators, and was interested in a wide range of subjects. In 1748 he came up with the idea of the stepped lens, used today in lighthouses; in 1767 he had a new type of forge built on his estate. Throughout cultivated French society, he fostered a powerful interest in the natural sciences, which had hitherto been neglected by the general public. Académie française 1753. Autograph letter signed “Buffon” M. Du Tour, Paris, January 24, 1743, 2 pp. I/2 1n-4° address, Buffon was kept in bed by an inflammation; he aspires to return to the countryside because it is only there that he can work assiduously: “Comme vous aimez l’optique, l’été prochain je pourrai vous envoyer une copie de quelques expériences que j’ai faites et qui vous plairont. Nous venons de imprimé à Bordeaux une thèse de M. Desagulies sur l’électricité dont vous serez content… M. de Maupertuis doit bientôt faire imprimer une astronomie appliquée aux usages de la politique”.
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