Letter 3394

Desaguliers is to perform experiments at the Royal Society’s next meeting, but has to cancel after falling ill. He promises to follow through on the experiments when he has recovered. Desaguliers was the son of French Huguenots who quit France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). He was a natural philosopher and engineer, became Sir Isaac Newton’s pupil, was a proponent of Newtonianism, and performed lectures and experiments at the Royal Society (Patricia Fara, Desaguliers, John Theophilus (16831744), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7539, accessed 12 July 2013]).