Marin Mersenne

Marin Mersenne , OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or le Père Mersenne ; French: [maʁɛ̃ mɛʁsɛn] ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for Mersenne prime numbers, those written in the form M n = 2 − 1 for some integer n . He also developed Mersenne's laws , which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string (such as may be found on guitars and pianos ), and his seminal work on music theory , Harmonie universelle , for which he is referred to as the "father of acoustics ".

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