Physicist, born in Blois, C France. He helped Christiaan Huygens and then Robert Boyle in their experiments. He invented the steam digester (1679), forerunner of the domestic pressure cooker, and in c.1690 made a working model of an atmospheric condensing steam engine, on principles later developed by Thomas Newcomen and James Watt.
Life in France
Born in Blois, (Loir-et-Cher, Centre Région), Papin attended a Jesuit school there, and from 1661 attended University at Angers, from which he graduated with a medical degree in 1669.
First visit to London
Papin first visited London in 1675 , and worked with Robert Boyle from 1676 to 1679, publishing an account of his work in Continuation of New Experiments (1680).
Germany
A Huguenot, Papin was greatly affected by the increasing restrictions placed on Protestants by Louis XIV of France and the King's ultimate revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
While in Leipzig in 1690, having observed the mechanical power of atmospheric pressure on his 'digester', he built a model of a piston steam engine, the first of its kind.
He continued to work on steam engines for the next fifteen years. In 1705 he developed a second steam engine with the help of Gottfried Leibniz, based on an invention by Thomas Savery, but this used steam pressure rather than atmospheric pressure.
Return to London
Papin returned to London in 1707, leaving his wife in Germany. Papin's ideas included a description of his 1690 atmospheric steam engine, similar to that built and put into use by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, coincidentally thought to be the year of Papin's death. As a friend of Leibniz, Papin would have been at odds with Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society.
The last evidence of Papin's whereabouts was a letter he wrote dated January 23, 1712.
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