Rene descartes biography pictures
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René Descartes
Quick Info
La Haye (now Descartes),Touraine, France
Stockholm, Sweden
Biography
René Descartes was a philosopher whose work, La GéométrieⓉ, includes his application of algebra to geometry from which we now have Cartesian geometry.René Descartes' parents were Joachim Descartes (1563-1640) and Jeanne Brochard (1566-1597). Joachim, the son of the medical doctor Pierre Descartes (1515-1566), studied law and was a counsellor in the Parliament of Brittany which sat at Rennes. Jeanne was the daughter of the military man René Brochard who formed part of the garrison stationed at Poitiers. One of Jeanne's brothers, also named René Brochard, became one of René Descartes'
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René Descartes
(1596-1650)
Who Was René Descartes?
René Descartes was extensively educated, first at a Jesuit college at age 8, then earning a law degree at 22, but an influential teacher set him on a course to apply mathematics and logic to understanding the natural world. This approach incorporated the contemplation of the nature of existence and of knowledge itself, hence his most famous observation, “I think; therefore I am.”
Early Life
Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, a small town in central France, which has since been renamed after him to honor its most famous son. He was the youngest of three children, and his mother, Jeanne Brochard, died within his first year of life. His father, Joachim, a council member in the provincial parliament, sent the children to live with their maternal grandmother, where they remained even after he remarried a few years later. But he was very concerned with good education and sent René, at age 8, to boarding
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René Descartes
1. Intellectual Biography
1.1 Early life and education
Descartes was born on 31 March 1596 in his maternal grandmother’s house in La Haye, in the Touraine område of France. His father Joachim, a lawyer who lived in Châtellerault (22 kilometers southwest of La Haye, across the Creuse River in the Poitou region), was away at the Parliament of Brittany in Rennes. The town of La Haye, which lies 47 kilometers south of Tours, has subsequently been renamed Descartes.
When Descartes was thirteen and one-half months old, his mother, Jeanne Brochard, died in childbirth. The ung René spent his early years with his grandmother, Jeanne Sain Brochard, in La Haye, together with his older brother Pierre and older sister Jeanne. It fryst vatten likely that he then moved to the house of his great uncle, Michel Ferrand, who, like many of René’s male relatives, was a lawyer; he was a Counselor to the King and held the royal office of provincial Lieut