Pierre Millet

Pierre Millet, a French missionarv. born in 1631, died in Quebec, March 22, 1708. He came to America in 1666, and was soon after sent to Onondaga, laboring there and at Oneida till 1684, and making a few converts. He returned to Oneida in 1688, but because of the English influence could not restore his mission. While acting as chaplain at Fort Frontenac in 1690, he was lured out by the Indians and taken prisoner. The Christian Oneidas in the large Iroquois force claimed him, and he was sent to their canton, and finally adopted into the tribe. The New York authorities who had been hostile to him now endeavored to induce the Oneidas to give him up; but they refused, and he remained there till October, 1694, to the great annoyance of New York, the governors of that colony endeavoring to effect his release, and the governors of Canada to prevent it. His own account of his captivity was published at New York in 1865.

Pierre Nicole

Pierre Nicole, a French moralist, born in Chartres, Oct. 19, 1625, died in Paris, Nov. 16, 1695. He graduated at the university of Paris in 1644, and for several years held a professorship in the Port Royal community. He was one of the authors of their school books, and assisted in their controversy with the Jesuits. According to the abbé Goujet, he had a share, either by advice or correction, in several of Pascal's "Provincial Letters," of which be made an elegant Latin translation under the assumed name of William Mendrock (Cologne, 1658). He was the principal author of Le la perpetuité de la foi de l'Elise catholique touchant l'eucharistie, published under the name of Arnauld. He shared in the persecutions which befell the Port Royalists, and was obliged to leave Paris in 1677. His fame rests upon his Essais de morale et instructions the-ologiques (25 vols. 12mo, 1671 et seq.). There is a life of him by Goujet (1732).

Pierre Prevost

Pierre Prevost, a Swiss physicist, born in Geneva, March 3, 1751, died there, April 8, 1839. He studied theology and law, took his degrees as advocate and doctor in 1773, and was a private teacher in Holland and Paris till 1780, when he went as professor of philosophy to Berlin. He returned to Geneva in 1784, and became in 1793 professor of philosophy there, and in 1810 of natural sciences; and from 1814 to 1823 he was also a member of the representative council of Geneva. He edited Greek classics,, translated works by Adam Smith and other English writers, and published works on philosophy and political economy. He is known by his theories relating to radiant heat, called Prevost's "theory of exchanges." His principal works are: De Vori-gine des forces magnetiques (Geneva, 1788); Recherches physico-mecaniques sur la chaleur (1792); Du calorique rayonnant (1809); and Traites de physique mecanique (1818).

Pierre Richer De Belleval

Pierre Richer de Belleval, a French botanist, born in Chalons-sur-Marne in 1558, died in Montpellier in 1623. Henry IV., learning that the medical students of France were accustomed to complete their education in the universities of Italy, where the professors had botanical gardens under their charge, founded by royal edict in 1593 a botanical garden at Montpellier, in which he appointed Belleval a professor. Belleval is regarded as one of the founders of strictly scientific botany, since he was among the first to consider plants according to their general characteristics, without regard to their medicinal properties. He had 400 plates engraved, which were praised by Tournefort and Linnaeus, but have been nearly all lost.