Everything about Mathieu Tillet totally explained
Mathieu Tillet (
November 10,
1714 Bordeaux -
December 13,
1791) was a French botanist, agronomist, metallurgist and administrator.
Life
He was the son of the
goldsmith Gabriel Tillet and began studying metals at his father's workshop. In 1740 he was appointed Director of the Mint at
Troyes. Ten years later he published his first book, about
alloys. In 1750, he was awarded a prize by the Academy of Bordeaux for his research concerning the plagues of cereals, especially wheat. In 1755, he published the results of his research as
Dissertation sur la cause qui corrompt et noircit les grains de blé dans les épis; et sur les moyens de prévenir ces accidents (
Explanation of the cause that corrupts and blackens the grains of wheat in the ears; and the means to prevent these accidents), and was awarded another prize for it. The fungus
Tilletia tritici, which he describes in this work, was named after him a century later by
Charles and
Louis Tulasne. In 1756 he resigned from his post at the Mint at Troyes and moved to Paris, living on
Rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame.
On September 9, 1758, he was admitted to the
French Academy of Sciences as a botanist. He occupied several offices at the Academy over the next decades, finally becoming Treasurer in 1788, after the death of his predecessor
Buffon.
In 1760 and 1761 he traveled around the
Angoumois, researching yet another cereal plague together with his friend and fellow agronomist
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. The result of this was the book
Histoire d'un insecte qui devore les grains de l'Angoumois (
History of an Insect that Devours the Grains of the Angoumois, published by H. L. Guérin & L. F. Delatour, Paris, 1762).
In 1766 he was charged with the making of 24 copies of the
Toise de l'Academie, the official measuring unit of length in the Kingdom of France, and their distribution to the main French cities of the time.
In 1767 he was appointed Inspector-General of the
Mint, a post he held until 1774 when he was succeeded by the
Marquis de Condorcet. In 1773 he became a Knight of the
Order of Saint Michael.
In 1784 he became the General Administrator of the
Salpêtrière. It was during his administration that the
Comtesse de la Motte was imprisoned there for her participation in the
Affair of the diamond necklace, and escaped.
He was a member of the Metric Commission of the Academy of Sciences, with
Jean-Charles de Borda,
Joseph Louis Lagrange,
Antoine Lavoisier,
Marquis de Condorcet,
Pierre-Simon Laplace and
Gaspard Monge, who presented on March 19, 1791, a report to the
National Constituent Assembly in which the basis for the length of the
meter was established. The report rejected the fixing by a pendulum that swings once at the
equator, and defined the length of the meter as 1 ten-millionth of a quarter of a
meridian. The meridian was subsequently measured by
Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and
Pierre MéchainFurther Information
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