Marin Cureau de la Chambre

Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1594 to 1669) was a French physician and philosopher born in Saint-Jean-d'Assé, a village near Le Mans. He practised medicine in Le Mans, moved to Paris around 1630 and became friend and physician to Pierre Séguier and later a physician in ordinary to Louis XIV. He is best known for his work on physiognomy and for the five volume study of character and the passions, Caractère des passions, published between 1640 and 1662. He also wrote on palmistry, digestion, reasoning in animals, occult practices and optics, where he investigated the nature of light and colour, refraction and the possibility of primary and secondary colours, and he published a translation of Aristotle's Physica. He became an early member of the Académie française in 1634 and an original member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1666.