Edme Mariotte (1620-12.05.1684) was a French physicist, a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1666) and one of its founders. He was born in Dijon. He was prior of the monastery of St Martin near Dijon.
His work was in the fields of mechanics, heat and optics. In 1676 he established the law of the change in volume of a given mass of gas with pressure at constant temperature (the Boyle — Mariotte law; R. Boyle and R. Towneley discovered this law in 1661). He foresaw various applications of this law, in particular the calculation of the height of ground from barometer readings. He confirmed experimentally Torricelli's formula for the speed of efflux of a liquid, studied the height to which fountains rise and drew up tables of the dependence of that height on the diameter of the orifice. He studied the collision of elastic bodies and the oscillations of a pendulum. In his “Treatise on the percussion or collision of bodies” (1678) he summarised the research in this field. He proved that water increases in volume on freezing. In 1666 he discovered the blind spot in the eye, studied colours, in particular the coloured rings around the Sun and the Moon, and studied the rainbow, the diffraction of light and radiant heat, showing the difference between thermal and light rays. He made a good many different physical instruments.