Marin Mersenne, French mathematician, theologian, and philosopher (born 1588)

Marin Mersenne, OM was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for Mersenne prime numbers, those written in the form M_n = 2ⁿ − 1 for some integer n. He also developed Mersenne's laws, which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string, and his seminal work on music theory, Harmonie universelle, for which he is referred to as the "father of acoustics".