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Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

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Placeholder for Newton's precious Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

Stephensonia

Fatio did stop the kidnapping of William III. In Quicksilver, he — too — is a phantom.

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Community entry: Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

A Newtonian, the Swiss mathematician, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664 - 1753) was one of a circle of admirers celebrating the now internationally recognized Isaac Newton following the publication of the Principia Mathematica. A Royal Society meeting June 12 1689 was when the two are thought to have met for the first time. A member of the Society, he had to be more than a groupie offering swiss cures.

It is clear that Newton's longest personal relationship may have been his 20-year roommate John Wickens. Daniel Waterhouse's fictional character assumes Wicken's place as confidante. They met while he was a student and professor at Cambridge. Wickens and Newton moved in together to escape the unruly Cambridge student life; Wickens also joined the faculty. Later he was laboratory assistant and acted as secretary to Newton. Six years after they parted Fatio entered his life. Some letters between the Fatio and Isaac survive, recording several trips and overnight lodgings these men had together. Any possible compromising information was excised by Newton.

Fatio considered himself the conduit between Newton and the other ardent Newtonians who vied for attention. Notes of an extended conversation between Fatio and David Gregory dated between late 1691 to mid-1694 exist from when the latter was cut off from face to face contact with his mentor. Fatio and David covered a range of scientific topics magnetism, color, refraction, the movements of solids through fluids. The duo corresponded about the Queen's receipt of an remarkable clock; This may have been the trigger for Fatio's 1704 technique development of using drilled jewels as bearing for watchmaking.[1]

Soon after Fatio moved to Europe, Newton suffered a second nervous breakdown in 1693, which forced him to give up his research work. Fatio became ill; then family and financial problems threatened to call him home to Switzerland which distressed Newton enormously. Fatio remained a staunch supporter of Newton concerning the priority dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, because he published in 1699, a contract, in which he stated that Newton was not only the certified first, but by many years the first inventor, and insinuated that Leibniz had stolen it. This is at least 6 years after the relationship ended and Newton's breakdown. So the two must have remained friends if not as close as before.

One must look to other factors in Newton's collapse of 1693: * mercury poisoning from his alchemy[2] experiments; * stress from overwork; * frustration with his researches; * problems with his religious beliefs linked with depression, that he suffered most of his life; * Likeliest, all of the above were factors.

Four months later, Samuel Pepys and John Locke, both personal friends of Newton, received bitter letters of accusation. Pepys was told that Newton would see him no more and Locke was accused of trying to entangle him with women.

Fatio’s accusation of Leibniz was not pursued, partly because of the former’s religious excesses[3], but in 1708, another loyal follower of Newton, John Keill (secretary of the Royal Society as well as “a war-horse, whose ardor was so intense that Newton sometimes had to pull in the reins”), formally repeated the charge of Leibniz’s plagiarism—an accusation published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1710." ... might explain what Daniel Waterhouse knew of Newton's collapse in 1693 drinking his "eggnog" with Enoch Root on what wiil become Columbus Day, 1713.

Swiss cure

I'm told the Swiss believe a sip of brandy with a dash of peppermint is the best cure for hangovers. Other swiss cures are baths, and famous herbal remedies ...

Fatio in Fiction

Two Plays about Newton - Newton's Darkness and Calculus: Newton's Whores do feature Fatio. He figures in Newton's Cannon (Book 1 in the "Age of Unreason" tetragy) by J. Gregory Keyes.[4]