Nicolas Faccio

Nicolas Faccio (1664–1753), of Duillier was a Swiss mathematician and Protestant fanatic.

Life

Faccio was the second son of Jean Baptiste Faccio, by his wife Catherine Basband or Barbaud. He was born at Basel, 16 February 1664. His ancestors had left Italy for Switzerland, on account of their religion, at the beginning of the Reformation. His father, a man of considerable property, had bought about 1670 the manor of Duillier in Vaud. Faccio was destined at first for the church, and, after a good classical training at home and at Geneva, studied philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. He then began to study Hebrew and attend divinity lectures at Geneva, of which he was enrolled a citizen in 1678, but his mother wishing him to take service at some Protestant court in Germany, he was, he says, ‘left wholly to himself,’ and gave up all thoughts of the ministry.

Before he was eighteen he wrote to Dominic Cassini suggesting a new method of determining the sun's distance from the earth, and an explanation of the form of Saturn's ring. Encouraged by Cassini's reply, he went to Paris in the spring of 1682, and was kindly received.^[1] In 1683 Cassini gave his theory of the zodiacal light. Faccio followed his observations, repeated them at Geneva in 1684, and gave in 1685 new and important developments of this theory (CHOUëT in Les Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, March 1685, pp. 260–7). They were published in his ‘Lettre à M. Cassini … touchant une lumière extraordinaire qui paroît dans le ciel depuis quelques années,’ 12mo, Amsterdam 1686. Faccio also invented some useful machines. He studied the dilatation and contraction of the pupil of the eye, and described the fibres of the anterior uvea and the choroid in a letter to Mariotte dated 13 April 1684.

He introduced improvements in telescope glasses; showed how to take advantage of a ship's motion through the water to grind corn, to saw, to raise anchors, and to hoist rigging; contrived a ship's observatory; was the first to discover the art of piercing rubies to receive the pivots of the balance-wheel of watches; and measured the height of the mountains surrounding Geneva, planning, but never completing, a map of the lake.

Faccio returned to Geneva in October 1683. During the following year he became acquainted with one Fenil, a Piedmontese count, who, having offended in turn the Duke of Savoy and the King of France, took refuge in the house of Faccio's maternal grandfather in Alsace, and eventually at Duillier. Fenil confided to Faccio a plan for kidnapping the Prince of Orange at Scheveling, and produced a letter from Louvois offering the king's pardon, approving of the plan, and enclosing an order for money. Faccio revealed the plot to his friend Gilbert Burnet, whom he accompanied to Holland in 1686 in order to explain it to the prince. To reward him it was resolved to create for Faccio, whose abilities were certified by Huyghens, a mathematical professorship, with a house and a commencing salary of twelve hundred florins. The prince also promised him a private pension. Some delay occurring, Faccio got leave to pay a visit to England in the spring of 1687, where, he writes, ‘being mightily pleased with this nation, and with the English language, and having been ill at Oxford, I did not care to return to the Hague; where, by the imprudence of others, I might have become too much exposed to the resentment of two kings and of the count at once; but stayed in England till the Prince of Orange was in full possession of these kingdoms.’ He was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, 2 May 1688.^[2] Having obtained posts for some of his countrymen in the English and Dutch service, Faccio ‘found it necessary for his own rest’ to leave England for a while. He became travelling tutor to the eldest son of Sir William Ellis and a Mr. Thornton, and resided during part of 1690 at Utrecht. Here he met Edmund Calamy, who writes of him that at that time he was generally esteemed to be a Spinozist. In the autumn of 1691 Faccio returned to England. He was in Switzerland in 1699, 1700, and 1701 ^[3]

Faccio was concerned in the famous quarrel between Newton and Leibnitz. He had visited Newton at Cambridge in November 1692. Newton gave him money, and offered to make him a regular allowance on the condition of his permanently residing at Cambridge (letter of Newton, dated 14 March 1692–3, in Nichols, Illustr. of Lit. iv. 58). Faccio was unworthy of his patron. Hearne says that he was ‘a sceptick in religion, a person of no virtue, but a mere debauchee,’ and he relates how Faccio ‘got by his insinuation and cunning a vast sum of money’ from his pupil the Duke of Bedford (Collections, Oxf. Hist. Soc., ii. 244). Faccio alleged that he had convinced Newton of certain mistakes in the ‘Principia’ (Rigaud, Historical Essay, p. 100; Edinburgh Transactions, 1829, xii. 71). He puts himself on a par with Newton, and in a letter to Huyghens, dated 1691, writes that it is really unnecessary to ask Newton to prepare a new edition. ‘However,’ he adds, ‘I may possibly undertake it myself, as I know no one who so well and thoroughly understands a good part of this book as I do.’ Huyghens gravely wrote on the margin of this letter ‘Happy Newton’ (Kemble, State Papers and Correspondence, pp. 426–7). When Leibnitz sent a set of problems for solution to England he mentioned Newton and failed to mention Faccio among those probably capable of solving them (ib. p. 428). Faccio retorted by sneering at Leibnitz as the ‘second inventor’ of the calculus in a tract entitled ‘Lineæ brevissimæ descensus investigatio geometrica duplex, cui addita est investigatio geometrica solidi rotundi in quo minima fiat resistentia,’ 4to, London, 1699 (p. 18). In replying to Faccio (Acta Eruditorum, 1700, p. 203) Leibnitz appealed to Newton himself as having admitted the independent discovery. Faccio sent a reply to the editors of the ‘Acta Eruditorum,’ but they refused to print it on the ground of their aversion to controversy (ib. 1701, p. 134). Finally he stirred up the whole Royal Society to take a part in the dispute (Brewster, Memoirs of Sir I. Newton, 2nd edit. ii. 1–5).

Faccio continued to reside in London as a teacher of mathematics. He entered into partnership with the brothers Peter and Jacob de Beaufré, French watchmakers in London, and obtained a fourteen years' patent for the sole use in England of his invention relating to rubies (London Gazette, 11 May 1704). In March 1705 he exhibited specimens of watches thus jewelled to the Royal Society (Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camd. Soc. xxiii. 317–18). About this time Faccio associated himself with the Camisards, or ‘French prophets,’ becoming their chief, and committing their warnings to writing. The government suspected him of contriving some deep political scheme. At last Faccio and two of his brethren were prosecuted at the charge of the French churches in London, and condemned by the queen's bench to the pillory as common cheats and impostors. On 2 Dec. 1707 Faccio stood on a scaffold at Charing Cross, with an inscription on his hat describing him as an accomplice in spreading ‘wicked and counterfeit prophecies.’ By the influence of the Duke of Ormonde, to whose brother, Lord Arran, Faccio had been tutor, he was saved from the violence of the mob (Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs, 1857, vi. 240). He next started on an expedition to convert the world, wandered through Germany, went into Asia, and in the end drifted back to England. He was in London in May 1712. Eventually he retired to Worcester, where he formed some congenial friendships, and busied himself with scientific pur- suits, alchemy, and the mysteries of the cabbala. In 1732 he endeavoured, but it is thought unsuccessfully, to obtain through the influence of John Conduitt [q. v.], Newton's nephew, some reward for having saved the life of the Prince of Orange. He assisted Conduitt in planning the design, and writing the inscription for Newton's monument in Westminster Abbey. He died on 28 April or 12 May 1753 (Gent. Mag. xxiii. 248), and was buried at the church of St. Nicholas, Worcester (Green, Worcester, ii. 93–4; cf. Nash, Worcestershire, vol. ii. supplement, p. 101). He left a number of manuscripts, of which some passed into the hands of Dr. Johnstone of Kidderminster; others were acquired by Professor Le Sage of Geneva, who also possessed a large collection of his letters. A few of his papers and letters are in the British Museum. Among them is a Latin poem entitled ‘N. Facii Duellerii Auriacus Throno-servatus’ (Addit. MS. 4163), containing a curious narrative of Fenil's plot and a not inelegant description of the jewelled watches. A series of letters to Sir Hans Sloane (ib. 4044) extend from 1714 to 1736. Other letters of his are in fasciculus 2 of ‘C. Hugenii aliorumque seculi xvii. virorum celebrium Exercitationes Mathematicæ et Philosophicæ,’ 4to, the Hague, 1833. To vol. v. of Le Clerc's ‘Bibliothèque Universelle,’ 1687, Faccio contributed ‘Réflexions sur une méthode de trouver les tangentes de certaines lignes courbes, qui vient d'être publiée dans un livre intitulé: Medicina Mentis.’ The ‘Acta Lipsiensia’ for 1700 contains ‘Excerpta ex suâ responsione ad excerpta ex litteris J. Bernouilly.’ Besides a paper in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ xxviii. 172–6, entitled ‘Epistola ad fratrem Joh. Christoph. Facium, qua vindicat Solutionem saum Problematis de inveniendo solido rotundo seu tereti in quo minima fiat resistentia,’ Faccio contributed articles on astronomy and Hebrew metres in nearly every number of the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1737 and 1738. In addition to the works already mentioned he was author of: 1. ‘Epistola … de mari æneo Salomonis ad E. Bernardum’ in the latter's ‘De Mensuris et Ponderibus antiquis Libri tres,’ 8vo, Oxford, 1688. 2. ‘Fruit-walls improved by inclining them to the horizon,’ by a member of the Royal Society (signed N. F. D., i.e. N. Faccio de Duillier), 4to, London, 1699. 3. ‘N. Facii Duillerii Neutonus. Ecloga,’ 8vo (Ghent?), 1728. 4. ‘Navigation improv'd: being chiefly the method for finding the latitude at sea as well as by land,’ fol., London (1728). With Jean Allut, Elie Marion, and other zealots, he issued an unfulfilled prophecy with the title ‘Plan de la Justice de Dieu sur la terre dans ces derniers jours et du relévement de la chûte de l'homme par son péché,’ 2 parts, 8vo, 1714, of which a Latin version appeared during the same year.

A younger brother, Jean Christophe Faccio, possessed much of Nicolas's learning, but none of his genius. He was elected F.R.S. on 3 April 1706 (Thomson, Hist. of Roy. Soc. appendix iv. p. xxxi), and published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (xxv. 2241–6) a description of an eclipse of the sun which he had observed at Geneva on 12 May of that year. He died at Geneva in October 1720 (will registered in P. C. C. 5, Buckingham). By his wife Catherine, daughter of Jean Gassand of Forealquiere in Provence, to whom he was married in 1709, he left no issue. Her will was proved at London in March 1752 (registered in P. C. C. 64, Bettesworth).

References

1. ^ Gent. Mag. viii. 95
2. ^ Thomson, Hist. of Roy. Soc. appendix iv. p. xxviii
3. ^ See his letter in William Seward, Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, 4th edit. ii. 190–215.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Faccio, Nicolas". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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Name	Faccio, Nicolas
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Date of birth	1664
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Date of death	1753
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