Bernard Lamy

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Bernard Lamy studied at the Oratorian college in Le Mans. At the age of 18 he went to Paris and entered the Maison d'Institution. After a year he went to Saumur where he studied philosophy. He was admitted to the Congregation of the Oratory in 1662. Malebranche was also a member of the Congregation of the Oratory and they met as students and remained friends for the rest of their lives.

In 1661 Lamy was appointed professor of classics at Vendome. He held this post for two years before being appointed to a similar post in Juilly.

Lamy was ordained in 1667 and studied theology, also at Saumur, from 1669 until 1671. After this he became professor of philosophy at the College of Saumur, moving to a similar post at the College of Angers two years later.

Lamy taught Descartes's philosophy at Angers and for this he was exiled by order of the King in 1676. After four years his exile ended and he was able to teach in Grenoble.

He published Traité de Mécanique in 1679 in which the parallelogram of forces law is given. Varignon discovered the parallelogram of forces law independently, at about the same time, and he saw more consequences of it than did Lamy. Lamy also published Traité de la grandeur en general (1680) and Les éléments de géometrie (1685).

In 1686 Lamy obtained permission to live in Paris but trouble over a theological work had him sent away in 1689 and he lived from 1690 in Rouen, remaining there for the rest of his life. He published several books while in Rouen, including Traité de perspective (1701).

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

JOC/EFR © December 1996 Copyright information	School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland
The URL of this page is: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lamy.html