View four larger pictures. He became a royal counsellor and revenue collector for the district of Blois. Denis Papin Sr married Madeleine Pineau, whose family had a tradition of being medical practitioners, around They had thirteen children with Denis, the subject of this biography, being their fourth child and eldest son.
His date of birth is unknown and the date we have given, 22 August , is actually the date of his baptism. He was presented for baptism by his uncle, Isaac Papin who was 26 years old at the time. The family were Huguenots, a French branch of Protestants, and were protected from persecution by the Edict of Nantes which was passed in When he was six years old, Denis was put into the care of his uncle Nicolas Papin born 22 January Nicolas Papin was a medical doctor in Saumur, about km west of Blois, and had married there in and had three children born in , and In Saumur there was a Huguenot Academy and Denis studied at this school.
In , he began his studies of medicine at the University of Angers which had colleges of Law, Theology, Arts and Medicine,and attracted students from the whole of France. He graduated with a medical degree on 4 June but [ 13 ] At this stage in his career, Papin intended to follow medicine so, after some months back in Blois, he went to Paris in to begin life as a medical doctor.
However, he was much more interested in mathematics and mechanics than he was in medicine and soon he was bored with medicine. The Charron and the Papin families were both from Blois so Marie Colbert was an obvious person for Papin to approach looking for support.
Now, from December , Colbert had been organising a small group of scholars to meet in the King's library. Christiaan Huygens , one of the leading scientists of his day, had been persuaded to work in Paris and was a leading member of Colbert's group. He was looking for an assistant so it was arranged for Papin to fill this role. This included Huygens 's design of the air-pump as well as many of his experiments with the instrument that he had performed since , including testing the reaction of animals and plants inside the pump and observing the barometer in the apparently vacuous receiver.
